Great news for Android lovers: morenew flavors are available. But only if you have the right cone, as it were. TheGSM / UMTS version of the Nexus S will begin seeing Android 4.0 (Ice CreamSandwich) hit starting today, and rolling out across the board during the nextfew months. The Sprint version of the device, using a CDMA / WiMAX radio, isn'tincluded in the opening round. Hackers have already discovered a way to injectAndroid 4.0.3 onto any Nexus S, but as always, we'd advise you to wait for thereal-deal if you value your sanity. v4.0.3 is also going out to developers,with a new of enhancements and bug fixes to boot. The company plans to makethat build the one to shop to partners going forward, and it should hit phonesand tablets at large "in the coming months."
Introducing Android 4.0
Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is the latest version ofthe Android platform for phones, tablets, and more. It builds on the thingspeople love most about Android — easy multitasking, rich notifications,customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity — and addspowerful new ways of communicating and sharing.
Simple, Beautiful, Useful
Refined, evolved UI
Focused on bringing the power of Android to the surface,Android 4.0 makes common actions more visible and lets you navigate withsimple, intuitive gestures. Refined animations and feedback throughout thesystem make interactions engaging and interesting. An entirely new typefaceoptimized for high-resolution screens improves readability and brings apolished, modern feel to the user interface.
Virtual buttons in the System Bar let you navigate instantlyto Back, Home, and Recent Apps. The System Bar and virtual buttons are presentacross all apps, but can be dimmed by applications for full-screen viewing. Youcan access each application's contextual options in the Action Bar, displayedat the top (and sometimes also at the bottom) of the screen.
Multitasking is a key strength of Android and it's made eveneasier and more visual on Android 4.0. The Recent Apps button lets you jumpinstantly from one task to another using the list in the System Bar. The listpops up to show thumbnail images of apps used recently — tapping a thumbnailswitches to the app.
The Recent Apps list makes multitasking simple.
Jump to the camera or see notifications without unlocking.
For incoming calls, you can respond instantly by text.
Rich and interactive notifications let you keep in constanttouch with incoming messages, play music tracks, see real-time updates fromapps, and much more. On smaller-screen devices, notifications appear at the topof the screen, while on larger-screen devices they appear in the System Bar.
Home screen folders and favorites tray
New home screen folders offer a new way for you to groupyour apps and shortcuts logically, just by dragging one onto another. Also, inAll Apps launcher, you can now simply drag an app to get information about itor immediately uninstall it, or disable a pre-installed app.
The All Apps launcher (left) and resizable widgets (right)give you apps and rich content from the home screen.
On smaller-screen devices, the home screen now includes acustomizable favorites tray visible from all home screens. You can drag apps,shortcuts, folders, and other priority items in or out of the favorites trayfor instant access from any home screen.
Resizable widgets
Home screens in Android 4.0 are designed to be content-richand customizable. You can do much more than add shortcuts — you can embed liveapplication content directly through interactive widgets. Widgets let you checkemail, flip through a calendar, play music, check social streams, and more —right from the home screen, without having to launch apps. Widgets areresizable, so you can expand them to show more content or shrink them to savespace.
New lock screen actions
The lock screens now let you do more without unlocking. Fromthe slide lock screen, you can jump directly to the camera for a picture orpull down the notifications window to check for messages. When listening tomusic, you can even manage music tracks and see album art.
Quick responses for incoming calls
When an incoming call arrives, you can now quickly respondby text message, without needing to pick up the call or unlock the device. Onthe incoming call screen, you simply slide a control to see a list of textresponses and then tap to send and end the call. You can add your own responsesand manage the list from the Settings app.
Swipe to dismiss notifications, tasks, and browser tabs
Android 4.0 makes managing notifications, recent apps, andbrowser tabs even easier. You can now dismiss individual notifications, appsfrom the Recent Apps list, and browser tabs with a simple swipe of a finger.
A spell-checker lets you find errors and fix them faster.
A powerful voice input engine lets you dictate continuously.
Improved text input and spell-checking
The soft keyboard in Android 4.0 makes text input evenfaster and more accurate. Error correction and word suggestion are improvedthrough a new set of default dictionaries and more accurate heuristics forhandling cases such as double-typed characters, skipped letters, and omittedspaces. Word suggestion is also improved and the suggestion strip is simplifiedto show only three words at a time.
To fix misspelled words more easily, Android 4.0 adds aspell-checker that locates and underlines errors and suggests replacementwords. With one tap, you can choose from multiple spelling suggestions, deletea word, or add it to the dictionary. You can even tap to see replacementsuggestions for words that are spelled correctly. For specialized features oradditional languages, you can now download and install third-partydictionaries, spell-checkers, and other text services.
Powerful voice input engine
Android 4.0 introduces a powerful new voice input enginethat offers a continuous "open microphone" experience and streamingvoice recognition. The new voice input engine lets you dictate the text youwant, for as long as you want, using the language you want. You can speakcontinously for a prolonged time, even pausing for intervals if needed, anddictate punctuation to create correct sentences. As the voice input engineenters text, it underlines possible dictation errors in gray. After dictating,you can tap the underlined words to quickly replace them from a list ofsuggestions.
Data usage controls let you monitor total usage by networktype and application and then set limits if needed.
Control over network data
Mobile devices can make extensive use of network data forstreaming content, synchronizing data, downloading apps, and more. To meet theneeds of you with tiered or metered data plans, Android 4.0 adds new controlsfor managing network data usage.
In the Settings app, colorful charts show the total datausage on each network type (mobile or Wi-Fi), as well as amount of data used byeach running application. Based on your data plan, you can optionally setwarning levels or hard limits on data usage or disable mobile data altogether.You can also manage the background data used by individual applications asneeded.
Designed for accessibility
A variety of new features greatly enhance the accessibilityof Android 4.0 for blind or visually impaired users. Most important is a newexplore-by-touch mode that lets you navigate without having to see the screen.Touching the screen once triggers audible feedback that identifies the UIcomponent below; a second touch in the same component activates it with a fulltouch event. The new mode is especially important to support users on newdevices that use virtual buttons in the System Bar, rather than dedicatedhardware buttons or trackballs. Also, standard apps are updated to offer animproved accessibility experience. The Browser supports a script-based screenreader for reading favorite web content and navigating sites. For improvedreadability, you can also increase the default font size used across thesystem.
The accessibility experience begins at first setup — asimple touch gesture during setup (clockwise square from upper left) activatesall accessibility features and loads a setup tutorial. Once accessibilityfeatures are active, everything visible on the screen can be spoken aloud bythe standard screen reader.
Contacts and profiles are integrated across apps and socialnetworks, for a consistent, personal experience everywhere — from incomingcalls to emails.
Communication and sharing
People and profiles
Throughout the system, your social groups, profiles, andcontacts are linked together and integrated for easy accessibility. At thecenter is a new People app that offers richer profile information, including alarge profile picture, phone numbers, addresses and accounts, status updates,events, and a new button for connecting on integrated social networks.
Your contact information is stored in a new "Me"profile, allowing easier sharing with apps and people. All of your integratedcontacts are displayed in an easy to manage list, including controls over whichcontacts are shown from any integrated account or social network. Wherever younavigate across the system, tapping a profile photo displays Quick Contacts,with large profile pictures, shortcuts to phone numbers, text messaging, andmore.
Unified calendar, visual voicemail
To help organize appointments and events, an updatedCalendar app brings together personal, work, school, and social agendas. Withuser permission, other applications can contribute events to the calendar andmanage reminders, for an integrated view across multiple calendar providers.The app is redesigned to let you manage events more easily. Calendars arecolor-coded and you can swipe left or right to change dates and pinch to zoom inor out agendas.
In the phone app, a new visual voicemail features integratesincoming messages, voice transcriptions, and audio files from one or moreproviders. Third-party applications can integrate with the Phone app to addyour own voice messages, transcriptions, and more to the visual voicemailinbox.
Capture the picture you want, edit, and share instantly.
Rich and versatile camera capabilities
The Camera app includes many new features that let youcapture special moments with great photos and videos. After capturing images,you can edit and share them easily with friends.
When taking pictures, continuous focus, zero shutter lagexposure, and decreased shot-to-shot speed help capture clear, precise images.Stabilized image zoom lets you compose photos and video in the way you want,including while video is recording. For new flexibility and convenience whileshooting video, you can now take snapshots at full video resolution just bytapping the screen as video continues to record.
To make it easier to take great pictures of people, built-inface detection locates faces in the frame and automatically sets focus. Formore control, you can tap to focus anywhere in the preview image.
For capturing larger scenes, the Camera introduces asingle-motion panorama mode. In this mode, you start an exposure and thenslowly turn the Camera to encompass as wide a perspective as needed. The Cameraassembles the full range of continuous imagery into a single panoramic photo.
After taking a picture or video, you can quickly share it byemail, text message, bluetooth, social networks, and more, just by tapping thethumbnail in the camera controls.
A Photo Gallery widget on the home screen.
Redesigned Gallery app with photo editor
The Gallery app now makes it easier to manage, show, andshare photos and videos. For managing collections, a redesigned album layoutshows many more albums and offers larger thumbnails. There are many ways tosort albums, including by time, location, people, and tags. To help pictureslook their best, the Gallery now includes a powerful photo editor. You can cropand rotate pictures, set levels, remove red eyes, add effects, and much more.After retouching, you can select one or multiple pictures or videos to shareinstantly over email, text messaging, bluetooth, social networks, or otherapps.
An improved Picture Gallery widget lets you look at picturesdirectly on the home screen. The widget can display pictures from a selectedalbum, shuffle pictures from all albums, or show a single image. After addingthe widget to the home screen, you can flick through the photo stacks to locatethe image you want, then tap to load it in Gallery.
Live Effects let you change backgrounds and use Silly Facesduring video.
Live Effects for transforming video
Live Effects is a collection of graphical transformationsthat add interest and fun to videos captured in the Camera app. For example,you can change the background behind them to any stock or custom image, forjust the right setting when shooting video. Also available for video is SillyFaces, a set of morphing effects that use state-of-the-art face recognition andGPU filters to transform facial features. For example, you can use effects suchas small eyes, big mouth, big nose, face squeeze, and more. Outside of theCamera app, Live Effects is available during video chat in the Google Talk app.
Snapping a screenshot.
Sharing with screenshots
You can now share what's on your screens more easily bytaking screenshots. Hardware buttons let them snap a screenshot and store itlocally. Afterward, you can view, edit, and share the screen shot in Gallery ora similar app.
Cloud-connected experience
Android has always been cloud-connected, letting you browsethe web and sync photos, apps, games, email, and contacts — wherever you areand across all of your devices. Android 4.0 adds new browsing and emailcapabilities to let you take even more with them and keep communication organized.
The Browser tabs menu (left) lets youquickly switch browser tabs. The options menu (right) givesyou new ways to manage your browsing experience.
Benchmark comparisons of Android Browser.
Powerful web browsing
The Android Browser offers an experience that’s as rich andconvenient as a desktop browser. It lets you instantly sync and manage GoogleChrome bookmarks from all of your accounts, jump to your favorite contentfaster, and even save it for reading later in case there's no networkavailable.
To get the most out of web content, you can now request fulldesktop versions of web sites, rather than their mobile versions. You can setyour preference for web sites separately for each browser tab. For longercontent, you can save a copy for offline reading. To find and open saved pages,you can browse a visual list that’s included with browser bookmarks andhistory. For better readability and accessibility, you can increase thebrowser’s zoom levels and override the system default text sizes.
Across all types of content, the Android Browser offersdramatically improved page rendering performance through updated versions ofthe WebKit core and the V8 Crankshaft compilation engine for JavaScript. Inbenchmarks run on a Nexus S device, the Android 4.0 browser showed animprovement of nearly 220% over the Android 2.3 browser in the V8 BenchmarkSuite and more than 35% in the SunSpider 9.1 JavaScript Benchmark. When run ona Galaxy Nexus device, the Android 4.0 browser showed improvement of nearly550% in the V8 benchmark and nearly 70% in the SunSpider benchmark.
Improved email
In Android 4.0, email is easier to send, read, and manage.For composing email, improved auto-completion of recipients helps with findingand adding frequent contacts more quickly. For easier input of frequent text,you can now create quick responses and store them in the app, then enter themfrom a convenient menu when composing. When replying to a message, you can nowtoggle the message to Reply All and Forward without changing screens.
For easier browsing across accounts and labels, the app addsan integrated menu of accounts and recent labels. To help you locate andorganize IMAP and Exchange email, the Email app now supports nested mailsubfolders, each with synchronization rules. You can also search across folderson the server, for faster results.
For enterprises, the Email app supports EAS v14. It supportsEAS certificate authentication, provides ABQ strings for device type and mode,and allows automatic sync to be disabled while roaming. Administrators can alsolimit attachment size or disable attachments.
For keeping track of incoming email more easily, a resizableEmail widget lets you flick through recent email right from the home screen,then jump into the Email app to compose or reply.
Android Beam lets you share what you are using with a singletap.
Innovation
Android is continuously driving innovation forward, pushingthe boundaries of communication and sharing with new capabilities andinteractions.
Android Beam for NFC-based sharing
Android Beam is an innovative, convenient feature forsharing across two NFC-enabled devices, It lets people instantly exchangefavorite apps, contacts, music, videos — almost anything. It’s incrediblysimple and convenient to use — there’s no menu to open, application to launch,or pairing needed. Just touch one Android-powered phone to another, then tap tosend.
For sharing apps, Android Beam pushes a link to the app'sdetails page in Android Market. On the other device, the Market app launchesand loads the details page, for easy downloading of the app. Individual appscan build on Android Beam to add other types of interactions, such as passinggame scores, initiating a multiplayer game or chat, and more.
Face recognition lets you unlock your phone with your face.
Face Unlock
Android 4.0 introduces a completely new approach to securinga device, making each person's device even more personal — Face Unlock is a newscreen-lock option that lets you unlock your device with your face. It takesadvantage of the device front-facing camera and state-of-the-art facial recognitiontechnology to register a face during setup and then to recognize it again whenunlocking the device. Just hold your device in front of your face to unlock, oruse a backup PIN or pattern.
Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth HDP
Support for Wi-Fi Direct lets you connect directly to nearbypeer devices over Wi-Fi, for more reliable, higher-speed communication. Nointernet connection or tethering is needed. Through third-party apps, you canconnect to compatible devices to take advantage of new features such as instantsharing of files, photos, or other media; streaming video or audio from anotherdevice; or connecting to compatible printers or other devices.
Android 4.0 also introduces built-in support for connectingto Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) devices. With support from third-partyapps, you can connect to wireless medical devices and sensors in hospitals,fitness centers, homes, and elsewhere.
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