We've finally got our hands on the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus, so we've taken an in-depth look at Google's latest OS: Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich to its friends.Google has told us that this is one of the biggest overhauls of the operating systems since it unleashed the Android project three years ago - and there's certainly a lot to plough through.
Booting up
Do you remember the last time you booted up a brand new Android device? It was a sweet moment, we'll bet, and the setup procedure remains largely unchanged, as you still have to either sign up for a Google account or throw in your existing login codes. New to the process, however, is the option to tie a Google+ account to your device as well and lets you enter credit card information for Market purchases. You're also given the choice of watching a tutorial meant to show you the ICS ropes. Whether you choose to view it or not, your phone's now good to go. The handset begins to sync in the background after you exit the bootup menus, a process that will take several minutes; we strongly recommend you connect your device to a WiFi network during setup, since ICS will hook you up with email, contacts, calendar entries, books, Picasa albums and Chrome bookmarks -- all data-intensive activities that eat gigabytes for breakfast. Fortunately you can still dive right into the enjoyment of your new phone without having to wait until the syncing is all done. Just don't panic if Bob Johnson isn't in your list of contacts yet.
User interface
The good news: the user interface has been improved on ICS, with a litany of new elements geared to make it significantly better. Still, whether or not you're coming from an Android background, there's going to be a learning curve. That doesn't seem like such a terrible prospect, but our geek dreams of an OS without the need for proprietary OEM skins won't get any closer to becoming a reality -- on the contrary, we'll likely see plenty of tweaks made by vendors in attempt to "enhance" the user experience.One of the first things you'll notice when making the journey to ICS is the color scheme. Gone is the lime green-on-black theme present on Gingerbread, and in its place comes a subtle light blue-on-gray motif. There are five home panels at your disposal, and there's no option to add or take away screens. Along the bottom is a "favorites tray" capable of holding up to four shortcuts -- besides the standard app tray button, of course -- doubling the previous version's layout of two (phone and browser). And while stock Gingerbread wouldn't allow those icons to be swapped, ICS does -- heck, you can even put folders here or just get rid of all of the apps altogether. The fact is, you're now given the choice, something we deeply appreciate.
Lock Screen
By now, you're probably starting to get a full sense of the scope of how much Android's UI has actually changed, and it certainly doesn't stop there. Even the lock screen saw a remodeling, and it's definitely for the better. Upon first glance you'll find the date and time laid out in Roboto, ICS's new signature font (an incredibly clean-looking one at that), with a simple lock icon near the bottom. You can slide the lock to the left or right -- right taking you into the standard home screen, and left taking you directly to the camera (which lends additional aid to Google's goal of taking a picture on a moment's notice, given the camera's professed lack of shutter lag). Slide your finger down from the top and the notification menu pops out -- and yes, you can access all of those notifications directly from the lock screen, which means you're able to check emails, voicemail messages and anything else within seconds of turning your phone back on.If extra security is what you need, ICS still offers you the usual suspects of PIN and pattern lock, though you sacrifice direct access to the camera and notification bar. But Google threw a unique technological nugget into its latest OS in Face Unlock, which theoretically cranks the security knob on your phone up to eleven.
Face Unlock
It's pretty easy to forget all about every other feature or UI enhancement in ICS considering the amount of buzz being generated by Face Unlock. We'll admit, we were pretty enticed by the feature as well at first, but let's not kid ourselves here: it's a gimmick. Clever, sure, but it's not as secure as you might think it is.Here's how it works: go to the security settings, select screen lock and choose "face unlock." The camera then memorizes your face -- or at least, the shape of it -- and asks you to submit a PIN code or pattern lock just in case it doesn't recognize you, which honestly happens more than we'd like. In fact, we saw both extremes: our faces typically weren't recognized if we angled our head slightly away from the camera or if we tried to unlock the phone in low light, but the phone easily recognized our face in the mirror and when wearing glasses. Even worse, we were able to gain access to the phone simply by holding our picture up to the camera.
Android's made it a point to include several core apps in each edition of its firmware, and ICS is no exception. These apps, which comprise of what many consider to be the absolute essentials, can be found in the revamped app tray -- and for easier access, you'll notice a "Google" folder on the main home screen panel that includes a healthy portion of apps offering Mountain View's services.Many of ICS's core apps have evolved from their previous iterations, allowing these programs to have complete synergy with the new user interface. No doubt they look and feel like they belong right at home on Android 4.0, and let's not forget about the extra functionality they bring to the table. Here's how each core app was enhanced with Ice Cream Sandwich.
Phone
Yeah, it has a dialpad and you can push numbers and make it call people. But what else can you do in the phone app? The first and foremost improvement is called "quick response," which allows you to reject an incoming call and fire back a text message letting the caller know that you're otherwise predisposed. Four different messages are allowed, and you can stick with the preset list of message options or swap them out with your own custom ones.
Gmail
Liked Gmail on your Gingerbread device before? It was pretty good before, but we have a hunch that you'll love it even more now. For one, you can actually create new messages without having to press an options key. In fact, most of Gmail's most used features have been brought forward to the app's forefront in ICS.
Browser
It's hard to know where to begin with the browser, as so many features and elements of its performance were affected by the upgrade. Besides the temporary omission of mobile Flash (which we'll discuss in more detail later), we had a hard time finding something to dislike. First, the ICS browser has certainly sped up; while benchmarks aren't a tremendous indicator of real-life performance, we were still quite happy to see SunSpider 9.1 bring up a time of 1,850ms. To offer perspective, the Samsung Galaxy S II, another well-oiled machine with hefty oomph underneath the hood, rarely dips down below 3,000. The Acid3 test on the Galaxy Nexus also scored a perfect 100 / 100.
Calendar
webOS may be having some rather tough times lately -- to put it mildly -- but Android 4.0 has borrowed some great design elements from its calendar (given Matias Duarte's heritage, should we be surprised?). The ICS datebook now supports pinch-to-zoom capability, which lets you expand or compress your appointments and helps you navigate to specific time slots more easily, and it also offers color coding to differentiate between your various calendars. You can also flip between view types: day, week, month and agenda can all be viewed.
Google+
Hangouts. In ICS's version of Google+, you're now able to join hangouts -- a feature we've always felt was wrongly missing from the app. The ten-person limit applies here, but you'll be able to do video group chats with your friends or associates. Keep in mind, however, that just because you can join 'em doesn't mean you can create 'em. Perhaps that's a bullet point on the list of features that just didn't make the cut in time.
Talk
We'd mention that the Google Talk app has a completely new design to fit with ICS, but let's face it -- nearly every native app on the new version of Android has been revamped, so this isn't any new revelation by any stretch of the imagination. Aside from UI, however, ICS has spiced up Talk's video chat service by adding image stabilization as well as a few fun (read: pointless) live visual effects that we'll cover in slightly more detail in the camera section.
Music Player
The music app in 4.0 brings an equalizer, 3D surround and bass boost effects. We were also told by Google that the player is designed to be faster in ICS, though we didn't necessarily see a noticeable difference overall.
Keyboard and text input
Google didn't let the keyboard off the hook in this update, and we're excited about it. The 'board itself looks quite similar, but there's a lot more horsepower pulling the wagon. ICS adds spellchecking, in which a red underline indicates a misspelled word and gives you suggestions on replacements. It delivers an improved autocorrect -- which shows several possible word ideas in a brand new row above the keyboard -- and prediction, which tries to guess the words you're trying to type as you go along, and detects double-typed words, letters or spaces you left out as well as other various errors. Double-tapping a word highlights it and brings up a "replace" option that offers suggestions from the dictionary. You can still add your own words to the phone's dictionary, and even better, third-party spellcheckers and dictionaries are now supported in ICS.Our relationship with the stock Android keyboard has always been hit-or-miss up to this point, but the latest revision is certainly making us a believer. We found that the new autocorrect functionality allowed us to type faster and with greater confidence.
Camera, galleries and media editors
Camera / camcorder UI
It won't take a very long time for stock Gingerbread users to become accustomed to ICS's camera, as the look and feel has largely remained untouched. There are, however, several key differences that will make you glad to jump to 4.0.
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich camera
The most heavily advertised feature of the new camera is its lack of shutter lag, and it really does work -- as long as you don't want to autofocus first. While a quick press of the shutter button generates an image in virtually no time at all, it's not guaranteed to be in focus unless you actually give it a second or two to do the job. Speaking of which, tap-to-focus and face recognition are both in full swing with ICS.Other new additions to the camera include a zoom slide bar on the right -- this replaces the standard set of options found in Android 2.3, though a press of the settings key will slide the zoom away to make room for them -- and panorama mode, accessible by pressing the toggle in the bottom right corner. Once you activate panorama, you just need to press the shutter button, pan your phone left or right, and hit the shutter again once you're done. Presto, your images are getting stitched together.
Miscellaneous
Data monitoring
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich data manager
So you're not one of those lucky saps that still has unlimited data, eh? Data management on Gingerbread was a project that resulted in one or two pieces of bloatware taking up valuable virtual space, but ICS will let you access your overall data usage, warn you when you approach a custom boundary and set limits based on your current plan. Have a 2GB plan? You can tell the OS to warn you when you reach 1.5GB, and then have the phone shut off access to the internet once you hit your monthly data allowance. You can also tell specific apps not to collect data or incur usage when it's running in the background, or just restrict those apps to only do so when you're in a WiFi zone.We do need to make one critical disclaimer here, however: the numbers offered up by ICS may not accurately reflect the same numbers your service provider offers up. So don't rely fully upon Android to do all the dirty work for you -- if you believe you're quickly approaching your limit, we still recommend checking with your carrier to make sure you're safe.
Screenshots
We were absolutely elated when we learned Android 4.0 would add the ability to take screenshots natively. While a couple Gingerbread devices somehow found a way to make this happen, the fact that it's officially sanctioned in stock Android is rather joyous. Previously, taking screenshots was a lengthy process that involved plugging your phone into a computer, making sure the right software was downloaded and Mars and Jupiter had to be aligned with Mercury in a perfectly straight line in the evening sky.With ICS, simply hold down the screen lock / power button and the volume down button for around one second. The shot magically goes into its very own screenshot folder, and we were able to drag and drop the files from there onto our computer with absolute ease.
Disable unwanted apps
Dost our eyes deceive us? Could it be? Yes! Ice Cream Sandwich -- in its pure vanilla state, at least -- lets you disable virtually any app on your phone. That's right, even the essential ones that you might actually use from time to time. Granted, these apps haven't actually gone anywhere, so they're still taking up storage space. They are, however, at least out of your hair.The wild card (as you probably expect) is OEM skins and carrier customization. We can easily see HTC quietly dismissing this feature -- among others -- in Sense 4.0. So this is absolutely a step in the right direction for stock devices, but what will happen to every other phone or tablet that becomes subject to the manufacturer's desires?
Easter Eggs
How much do those clever folks on the Android team love easter eggs? Enough to include one in each successive update, at least. A picture of "zombie art" by Jack Larson was hidden in Gingerbread, and Honeycomb featured a bee. ICS followed suit with an image of the Android robot dressed up in an Ice Cream Sandwich, which grows in size when you long-press it until it transforms into a Nyan Cat-style animation. We love easter eggs as much as anyone else, but it's not really hidden anymore: each of these gems can be found by simply going to the "About phone" option in the settings menu and pressing the Android version repeatedly until the robot pops up. It's not a well-kept secret anymore, to say the least.
Update: It turns out that there's actually a second easter egg called Rocket Launcher, and the Android Team kept this one a much better secret -- it takes a little trickery to activate. The Launcher looks like a screen saver; it shows all of your installed apps flying past you through space at different speeds and angles. Here's how to activate it using stock ICS: download and install Launcher Pro on your device, go into your standard launcher's widget menu and locate "activities." Drag and drop the widget onto your home screen, and a long list will appear. Locate and select "launcher," and Rocket Launcher is hanging out inside. The first time you try to use it, the program won't work properly. Exit out and go back in, and you'll find yourself flying at warp speed with icons zooming past you in every direction.
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