(Check out www.android.com for a video intro and much more information)
With ICS, Google decided it was time to give our little green robot friend a personality, one all dressed in Ice Cream Sandwich.
To design the personality, Google asked people, including users of other platforms, what needed to be at the soul of Google's new OS. They took all the feedback and came out with the following answers:
It must be enchanting
It must be easy
It must make me feel powerful/smart
So how does this translate to Android? Well, my personal favorite OS has always been somewhat harsh to newcomers. There are a lot of features and functionality that make Android the most powerful mobile operating system out there. Unfortunately for the unaccustomed, Android has always had a steep learning curve. With ICS, though, accessibility is at the forefront of the user experience.
The first thing mentioned (during the unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus badassphone) was that ICS is designed around a 1280x720p standard resolution so it will look super sharp on tablets and phones alike. They then revealed that a new typeface, called Roboto, was designed specifically to improve the readability of all things Android in ICS. I have to say, even though I didn't notice the change at first, I was watching the presentation in a small window on YouTube and was still able to read the text from ICS like I had the phone in front of me. That's impressive when you can read a high resolution font on a low resolution stream.
Another new feature is the customizable favorites tray (the icon tray on the bottom of the home screen). This is essentially what most Android pros have been doing with apps like ADW Launcher and LauncherPro on Froyo and Gingerbread for quite some time. What makes this even more useful is the addition of folders, a standard feature in iOS4 for grouping similar apps. These folders are easy to create and edit by simply dragging the icons you want together. You can then name these folders and even drag the folder itself down to the customizable favorites tray. Folders can also be contact favorites so it's very easy to get to the items you want.
Believe it or not, Android has made the notification tray EVEN MORE USEFUL in ICS. "How did they do this?" you might find yourself asking. Well, Google made the notification bar accessible in the lock screen. Say you get a new text. Before, you had to turn on the screen, unlock your phone and then pull the notification tray down and select the text you just received. Now, just turn on the screen and drag the notification bar down to see and interact with your notifications.
But that's just one addition to the lock screen. Google also decided that instead of sliding an icon to unlock the phone or using a pattern, you can simply unlock your phone by looking at it. That's right, ICS includes facial recognition to unlock the phone for the saved face only. A neat trick, however until I try it myself, I can't imagine using it a lot unless it's very quick. The other addition to the lock screen is a long awaited camera access icon. Instead of swiping the lock icon right to unlock the phone, simply slide the icon to the left to go right into the camera app.
Speaking of the camera, ICS has a veritable Neapolitan (boom...Ice Cream Pun) of new features in store. Starting with the Galaxy Nexus, you can bet that manufacturers of phones are going to start putting faster cameras into the phones. ICS takes advantage of these new cameras by being able to process pictures more quickly so you never miss that photo opportunity. ICS also features a brand new panoramic feature that seems to be right up there with some of Sony's point and shoot cameras. Add to this features like in app photo editing, time lapse photography and zooming WHILE recording video and Google has turned the ICS camera suite into a pretty solid pocket studio.
One of my favorite features added to ICS actually has more to do with resource management rather than any of the cornucopia of app improvements. ICS adds a really slick data usage tracker to keep a watchful eye on your gluttony of 4G. It allows you to set a data level where the phone will warn you that you're getting close to going over your allotted amount of GBs or actually tell your phone to disable the data connection when you reach a set level. This should help out with those people who stream Netflix 50 hours a day and get $10,000 phone bills (as long as they use it of course). What makes this even better is the data monitor actually allows you to dig down into each app's individual foreground and background data consumption so you can see which app is eating for two (and then set levels to tell it to knock it off).
ICS is making your phone more personable, too. Google has decided to revamp their contacts list to be more eye friendly. This translates to a greater prevalence of images in your contacts list. When you click on a contact, a nice size image pops up with all of the information for that contact below it. The thing that makes this smart and not just all good looks is that there will be APIs that can be implemented in programs which would allow for live synchronization of all contact information from various social networks. If someone were to change their name or address on Facebook, your contact card would pull down this information and update your contact information. Pretty useful if you ask me. Nothing is worse than trying to manage a couple hundred contacts.
The last thing I'll talk about here is ICS's use of NFC (Near Field Communication) to natively share any active anything to someone else with NFC built in. Google showed off sending a website between two phones by touching the backs of the phones together and tapping the screen to send your view to the other phone. They also did this with a map they were browsing on Google Maps and to send you to the Android Market page for a game or app you don't have that your friend was just showing you. This ability is called Android Beam and it's a slick little tool, but much like the face unlock, I can't really see myself using this all that much but we'll see.
There are a handful of other additions and tweaks to the Android OS with ICS so I really can't wait to get my hands on the new hotness (hint hint Google/Samsung). But before I sum up my impressions, I have a few questions that are still up in the air.
1) What does ICS look like on Tablets? Will it still have a customizable favorites tray or will there be some tweaks between ICS-P and ICS-T (phone/tablet).
2) Google Music needs an upheaval. It was mentioned in passing but what changes have been made there (and can I get a transparent widget please)?
3) When is this hotness being released? Please tell me I don't have to wait a whole month for the Galaxy Nexus to come out first.
Needless to say, I'm really excited by this release. I didn't see any "me too" features outside of the app folders and I feel that Google has got a winner on its hands with Ice Cream Sandwich. I never really thought about it before, but it's true, I finally feel like Android has an identity, a much needed, super slick, easy to navigate personality. I won't know everything about it until I get my hands on it, though.
Until then always remember
It is the Geeks that will inherit the Earth
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