He characterized the revised look of Ice Cream Sandwich as having "toned down the geeky nerd quotient" in comparison to Honeycomb, which carried a more futuristic appearance that was compared by critics to the aesthetics of Tron. The stock apps of Android 4.0 were also praised for having slightly better functionality in comparison to previous versions. Today, Sony confirmed its schedule for Jelly Bean updates on its line of phones. For starters, the recently-launched Xperia T and Xperia TX will be upgraded "from mid-Q1 2013." While its stranglehold on the distribution chart is still going strong, it has dropped off just a little bit since the last cycle, sliding from 60.3% of all devices to 57.5% last month. Woo! Trump’s TikTok and WeChat bans: What they really mean for you. Unveiled on October 19, 2011, Android 4.0 builds upon the significant changes made by the tablet-only release Android Honeycomb, in an effort to create a unified platform for both smartphones and tablets. Here’s what you need to know. Ice Cream Sandwich also introduced a new default system font, Roboto; designed in-house to replace the Droid font family, Roboto is primarily optimized for use on high-resolution mobile displays. [7], Matias Duarte, Google's vice president of design, explained that development of Ice Cream Sandwich was based around the question "What is the soul of the new machine?
It also introduced a number of other new features, including a refreshed home screen, near-field communication (NFC) support and the ability to "beam" content to another user using the technology, an updated web browser, a new contacts manager with social network integration, the ability to access the camera and control music playback from the lock screen, visual voicemail support, face recognition for device unlocking ("Face Unlock"), the ability to monitor and limit mobile data usage, and other internal improvements. [8] Android 4.0 contains an increased use of swiping gestures; apps and notifications can now be removed from the recent apps menu and dismissed from the notifications area by sliding them away, and a number of stock and Google apps now use a new form of tabs, in which users can navigate between different panes by either tapping their name on a strip, or swiping left and right. The keyboard incorporates improved autocomplete algorithms, and improvements to voice input allow for continuous dictation. On devices without a "Menu" key, a temporary "Menu" key is displayed on-screen while running apps that are not coded to support the new navigation scheme. "; user studies concluded that the existing Android interface was too complicated, and thus prevented users from being "empowered" by their devices. Other features were noted, such as the improvements to text and voice input, along with the data usage controls (especially given the increasing use of metered data plans), and its overall performance improvements in comparison to Gingerbread. Android blog RootzWiki released photos in August 2011 showing a Nexus S running a build of ICS, depicting a new application menu layout resembling that of Honeycomb, and a new interface with blue-colored accenting. Smartphones are great; they organize our lives, provide us with news and information, and keep us in touch with friends no matter how far away they may be. Google has released Roboto in 16 different typeface variations (bold, italic, condensed and differing weights) and with an Action Bar Icon Pack of user interface icons found throughout Ice Cream Sandwich, such as a search glass, pencil, phone, trash can and others. Tesla’s Musk offers bullish forecast, pumps brakes on batteries hype. For multimedia support, Android 4.0 also adds support for ADTS AAC, Matroska containers for Vorbis and VP8, WebP, streaming of VP8, OpenMAX AL, and HTTP Live Streaming 3.0. [3][4][5] An official launch event for Android 4.0 and the new Nexus phone was originally scheduled for October 11, 2011, at a CTIA trade show in San Diego.