Samsung Galaxy S II Get A Lick Of Ice Cream Sandwich

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Samsung has started upgrading its handsets, with the Galaxy S II getting Ice Cream Sandwich. The aging Galaxy S, meanwhile, will be upgraded to Gingerbread with extra bits.

They include face-unlocking and a photo editor, but it's the Galaxy S II and the Samsung tablets – including the Note – that will get a full upgrade to Android 4.

Lucky users in Poland, Hungary, Sweden and Korea are already starting to see the update being offered. Here in the UK we've got another week or so to wait before we get to unlock our phones with a smile.

Samsung's tablets will be leapfrogging Honeycomb to run Ice Cream Sandwich, bringing the excitement of a new font (Roboto) and snappier UI as well as the aforementioned unlock-by-face functionality.

Ice Cream Sandwich follows on from the tablet-specific Honeycomb, Android 3. ICS is supposed to unify the tablet and phone versions of Android, but given that many Android tablets are running Gingerbread or Froyo - both Android 2 - Honeycomb is perhaps best viewed as an experimental version which never took off.

Motorola was one of the few tablet manufacturers to embrace Honeycomb, making it slightly ironic that its own plans for ICE migration are so lacklustre. Americans who bought the 3G-capable Xoom tablet don't even have a timetable yet, but with Google spitting out a new Android version every six months it's not easy for handset manufacturers to keep up.

Nor is it clear how long other manufacturers can afford to chase Google's lead. Porting each new version of Android is expensive, but handset buyers expect manufacturers to provide free OS upgrades, at least until their network operator is prepared to subsidise them for the latest hardware. 

Source:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/13/samsung_galaxy_s_ii_gets_android_4_ice_cream_sandwich_update/

Top 10 features in Ice Cream Sandwich

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Summary: The latest version of Android provides a consistent and well thought out user experience, unifies the platform for both tablets and phones, and adds hundreds of new APIs for developers.

It’s here! Android 4.0, code named Ice Cream Sandwich, was announced Tuesday night by Google and Samsung at a press gathering in Hong Kong. The first phone to run Android 4 is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which will be available next month. But the good news is that the SDK is available right now at the Android Developer web site. Let’s take a look at the top features in the new operating system.

As usual we’ll break this up into user-oriented features and developer-oriented features. First, the top user features:

1. New consistent look and feel. Designer Matias Duarte (former designer of WebOS) says “While people like and need Android, they didn’t love Android”. So he gave the user interface a top to bottom overhaul to make it “enchanting, easy, and powerful”. New widgets, new gestures, context sensitive action bars, more discoverable commands - these are just the tip of the iceberg. Anybody who had complained about Android not having the level of polish or usability as other mobile OS’s should give Android 4 fresh look.
2. New system font. Android 4 sports a new type face called “Roboto” which was designed especially for high resolution screens like the one found on the Galaxy Nexus. By putting a new emphasis on typography, Duarte is taking a page from Steve Jobs who credited a college calligraphy class he audited for the great looking text on the Mac and iPhone. Roboto is part of a magazine-like revamp to many of the redesigned Android apps, which now have “big bold pictures with giant headlines”.
3. Screen shots. Hold down the power and volume down buttons to capture a screenshot of the currently running application. The picture will appear in your Gallery. I know this sounds like a minor thing, but it was sorely missed in stock Android.
4. Home screen improvements. The Android home screen got a lot of love in Android 4. New features for phones include resizable widgets with stacks and scrolling for richer information at your fingertips. Other new features include the ability to create a folder by dragging one icon on top of another, and a customizable quick action bar at the bottom of the screen. You can press a button in any screen to see recent apps and swipe them to the side to close them. There’s nothing really revolutionary here, and influences from TouchWiz and iOS and other systems are obvious, but the combination of all the features and little refinements will make Android much more approachable to new users.
5. Instant voice. In Android 2.x, 3.x, and iOS 5, you press a button to start recording, say what you have to say, and when you stop talking the phone sends the entire recording to the cloud. Servers in the cloud chew on it for a little while and then send the text or commands back to your phone. Android 4 gets rid of most of those delays with a cool feature called Instant Voice. Now you press the button and start talking and the text starts appearing while you are still talking.

There are dozens of other great features in Android 4 but those are my favorites. Others include improved notifications, better soft keyboard, face recognition to unlock (although that didn’t work so well during the demo), reading notifications from the lock screen, and more.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/top-10-features-in-android-40-ice-cream-sandwich/2392

Download the Ice Cream Sandwich ‘Roboto’ font for your Desktop

Last October, when Ice Cream Sandwich was announced, one of the first things highlighted in the huge press conference from Hong Kong was a sleek, new font used across the entire face of the Android OS, calledRoboto. One of the most interesting and appealing things about the font was its unique ability to play friendly with smaller smartphone screens, as well as larger screens found on tablets. I personally love the font — it is simple, yet elegant, and looks very nice on my Asus Transformer.

For those of you who have patiently waited for the font to become available in an even larger fashion, your wait is now over. Google has apparently made the font available for use on any computer capable of using TrueType fonts. Even better, you don’t have to pay a dime to get the font, as Google was kind enough to make it available free of charge.

If you’re running Windows 7, the install process is simple. Just grab the zip file from the download link at the bottom of the post. Extract it and click on the .ttf file to install — that’s it. Now you’ve got the lovely Roboto font at your disposal and you can do with it as you please.

Download link: Roboto
Source: Talk Android

HTC And Archos Begin Rolling Out Ice Cream Sandwich Updates

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The HTC Sensation and Sensation XE have apparently started to receive the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Updates in Germany, suggesting a possible UK release soon.

A spokesperson for HTC confirmed that the Ice Cream Sandwich update has begun rolling out on a select few mobile devices in some European territories, but could not confirm “a specific schedule for the rollout in the EMEA region.”

Additionally, Archos began the worldwide release of ICS for their G9 tablet last Thursday, explaining that they “wanted to deliver a smooth transition over to Android 4.0.”

“We worked closely with Google for full certification and took our time in testing the units to ensure this happened,”

The Android operating system, featuring Android Beam, facial recognition unlocking software, improved multi-tasking capabilities and a redesigned UI was released by Google last October, but it is taking manufacturers a while to get the update ready for devices that don’t already ship with it.

Samsung have still not confirmed when T3’s phone of the year 2011, the Galaxy S2 will get the update, having recently failed to deliver it on March 10^th as previously promised, but have reported that the update process will begin soon.

Source:http://www.t3.com/news/htc-and-archos-begin-rolling-out-ice-cream-sandwich-updates