Google's Ice Cream Sandwich, no they're not planning to take on Ben & Jerry's, is the biggest update to Android Google has ever undertaken. It adds hundreds of improvements, changes and features, making it work for both phones and tablets in equal measure. Google hopes the new version of Android will go some way to solving the fragmentation of the operating system and will be the simplest, most user friendly version to date.
The new UI
The sandwich part of the name is Google's attempt to the intergrate elements from both the phone version of Android Gingerbread, and the tablet version Honeycomb, into one harmonious system which will work equally well on phones or tablets. Perhaps the most striking shift with Ice Cream Sandwich is its move away from the four physical buttons that have long been Android phones’ most identifiable feature. In fact, the Galaxy Nexus – the flagship Android 4.0 phone – has no front facing buttons at all.
Instead, you get a trio of virtual buttons at the bottom of the display – to go back a step, to return to your home screen, and to multitask, or toggle among recently used applications. Those of your with a Android tablet will know this how the current crop of tablets handle navigation, but, can it work for a device with half the screen size? Well, we can report that they do work well, and it won’t be too much of hassle to get used to for Gingerbread users. There are, of course, some little niggles – sometimes the menu button can move from app to app meaning you'll have to search for it, which gets old, fast.
Google has gone for a minimal look for Ice Cream Sandwich, with subtle colours, detailed shades, and added depth using multiple layers - it more functional than showy, but for us it's the best Andriod UI so far. The new lock screen has everything you'd want; date, time and your wallpaper. Unlock the phone and you can jump directly to the camera or to one of five home screens. Here you'll be able to place widgets and icons as you see fit and now you can create folders by stacking apps, your four favourite icons will now stay at the bottom of every home screen.
What we liked
Alongside the greatly improved UI, you’ll notice a vastly improved Web Browser which has seen a major increase in performance. Compared to 2.3 Gingerbread it's twice as fast, with new pop-down menus to switch between mobile and desktop viewing and a new options for storing pages for offline reading.
There are also improvements for your contacts book; it's borrows a lot of cool features found in Window Phone 7 by integrating Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, you'll also see friends most recent status updates, and the ability to block calls from any one in your contacts list.
Gmail has had a decent lick of paint too, with new fonts, increased size of preview text, and you can now create a new message without having to press the menu botton - the whole experience has been refined to make it much more user friendly and quicker to use. The Camera app has also been dramatically overhauled too, making it incredibly faster to take pictures than any of its predecessors. The new music player integrates with Google Music, so it has a built-in store and lets you stream from your cloud music library.
Widgets have always of the most unique features of Android and they take centre stage once again with Ice Cream Sandwich, for example, the Gmail widget, lets you scroll through messages from your home screen. Similarly, the Photo Gallery widget, lets you flip through thumbnails of images on your phone. Widgets can now also be resized to take up more or less space on your home screen.
What we didn’t like
There's are plently of improvements to be found in Ice Cream Sandwich, but, as with any software update there are some things that will annoy you. For example, Face Unlock, is complete gimmick and a bit of a waste of time, and the Live Effects function is also a bit of a waste of time. Other annoyances come with Flash compatability, ICS's Web browser shows less of the web than current Gingerbread phone, this is due to the fact that the Adobe Flash plug-in doesn't work yet. Adobe has said that a work version will be with us by the end of the year, and this will solve any and all issues – but for a new OS, looking to take iOS 5 – it’s rather disappointing.
Those of you who are looking for a deeper intergration with Facebook will be left sorely disappointed. You can't absorb you Facebook contacts into your contacts books and can't intergrate Facebook into the message apps. Finally, and probably most disappointing is the fact that not all apps are working on Ice Creeam Sandwich. Google’s ambition for a seamless experience across all phones and tablets isn’t quite there yet - it isn’t directly Google’s fault – but users will still suffer. Ironically Google wanted to solve the fragmenting of its OS, but in the process has probably made it worse; it’s going to take a good couple of years, before all tablets and phones have the same Android software.
Conclusion
Any OS should do the simple things well, and then over the course of a few weeks should reveal cool little touches and tricks that surprise you and utimatley create a emotional bond with its users. Ice Cream Sandwich does the first part incredibly well, almost all the important features and functions are easily available, requiring far less button presses than every before, but we’re still struggling to fall in love with Android like you do with Apple’s iOS.