Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich review

Is this the tastiest release from Google yet?

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.

From enhanced contact menus to improved keyboards and NFC capabilities, even the most ardent Android users will have to spend some time getting used to the new OS - so let's dive in.

Interface

The most noticeable change with Ice Cream Sandwich is the interface - it might follow the same principles as the Android of old, but the way it's used is radically different in a number of ways.

Firstly, Android 4.0 is designed to work without buttons. That's not to say your Galaxy S2's keys won't work when the update happens, but going forward, it's going to be pristine bezels all the way.

Now to navigate around, you're offered three softkeys: Back, Home and Multi-tasking (or Recent Apps). The latter is particularly new for phones, and comes from the Honeycomb UI - basically a set of thumbnails that show recently opened apps.

Here's the new part: swipe sideways to shut down an application, which will greatly help reduce the battery consumption of your phone if there's something silently updating in the background.

The Home and Back buttons are the same as they've always been, but no longer have a 'long press' function attached... so you can't automatically call up the keyboard, for instance.

If you move into something media-ish, such as watching a movie or browsing the web like a pro, these three buttons shrink down to tiny dots, so you've got more of the screen to look at. However, remember what each dot does, as pressing it will take you home/open the recent apps etc and you might not want to.

For Android fans, this presents something of an issue: with the menu button gone, you'll have to hunt around the screen for three vertical dots which have taken its place. However, these can be anywhere, so sometimes you'll get distracted trying to work out how on earth to alter settings.

The multi-tasking pane also seems an odd choice for one of three buttons - it used to be you could access this functionality by long-pressing the home key, and it makes more sense to keep this and then have the multi-tasking slot taken up by a menu key.

However, despite the odd placement, the multi-tasking pane is cool - simply swipe horizontally on any open app to shut it down, in a similar way to the Cards system on webOS - it certainly helps keep open applications under control.

The home screens are once again limited to five, but this time there's no option to get rid of those you don't want. It's not a huge issue to some people, but with the expandable widgets and loads of apps you'll be looking to download, we'd have expected more.

However, we wouldn't worry too much about that - the Nexus S only had a limited number of homescreens, but as soon as the rest of the industry got its hands on the OS there were millions of the things flying around.

There's a plethora of tiny tweaks and changes to the Android OS that we were impressed with, ranging from the Tron-like blue theme that pervades throughout the OS to the ability to unlock the phone simply by using your face.

The latter security option is more novelty than anything else, with Google outlining at the start that it's not meant to be 100% secure.

We also found a few issues with getting it to recognise our face in varying light levels, or even working out which bit of the picture was a face - not the most effective for unlocking your handset, but when it works it's a great party trick.

The notifications bar has been given a functionality overhaul to now include larger information slots - if it's a contact that's sending you a message or a missed call, their contact photo will now appear too, which is a nice touch.

And sometimes you want to get rid of some notifications, but not others - this has been taken care of by allowing you to swipe away the updates about apps and messages you don't care about, making it easy to maintain your info bar.

Settings has also been given a spot in the notifications pane, meaning no matter where you are in the OS you can always duck out and tinker with the phone - this is excellent news for some applications that need GPS or Wi-Fi enabled swiftly.

However, we would have though Google would have copied the likes of Samsung or HTC here and offered one-tap switching to these elements - it works really well on most phones, so we're surprised by its omission.

The other new addition is the dock at the bottom of the screen - this stays on every home screen, and like iOS can be altered to contain the applications you like to tap away at the most.

Folders are more iOS-like too, with users given the ability to drag and drop icons on top of one another from the home screen to create bundles of apps which you can simply rename. Given Apple's ire about Google 'stealing' certain elements of its UI, we can't help but think this will create a little more angst down on Infinite Loop.

Google is clearly also thinking about giving users more ability to enjoy apps than ever before by putting a link to the Market in the top right hand corner of the menu screen, which we really liked as it meant we always knew we could quickly update our app catalogue when needed.

The other big change is widgets have been brought to the fore: you can now look at each one on the menu screen without having to actually select it - this really helps when a new application you've downloaded has an associated widget and you're wondering whether to waste time popping it on the home screen.

Overall, we love what Google has done with the Ice Cream Sandwich UI. It's nothing mind-blowing, but the little touches here and there will add to user delight, and that's what's needed to chip away at those that are dyed-in-the-wool iPhone users.

People : 

The contacts system has been much improved with Ice Cream Sandwich, with a completely different font (called Roboto, and used throughout Android 4.0) and pleasantly clean blue and white interface to roll through.

The contacts list is the same as it's ever been - insofar as it's a list of people with contact pictures next to their name. But the differences are quite large: for instance, social networking updates from the likes of Google+ and Twitter are available by tapping to open a contact profile then swiping to the left.

There's no Facebook integration as yet, but that's likely to be on the way soon as the social network updates its API. We've reached out to both parties to find out, so we'll let you know when we do.

Messaging : 

Google promised to keep updating the keyboard on its new versions of Android, and once again it's come up with a new version of the software - and it's pretty good.

There's not a whole heap of visual changes, bar the predictive suggestions: these have been dropped to just three per word, making it easier to select the word you're after.

Smaller, more subtle vibrations have also been added to each keypress to make it easier to register inputs... we tested this out and it doesn't seem that different to normal haptic feedback, to be honest - but a lot of users are loving it, so we'll give it a crowd-sourced thumbs up.

The accuracy is excellent too on the new keyboard, with even fudge-fingered attempts at writing yielding almost perfect texting. Speech to text is also enhanced, with real time feedback - no longer do you have to wait until you've finished speaking to see what the phone thinks you said, with the cloud-based prediction delivering results as you speak.

Internet Browser : 

As with most inbuilt features on Ice Cream Sandwich, there's a change to the internet browser too.

One of the big differences is the change to the tabbed browsing - now you get to see your entire set of open internet pages simply by scrolling vertically through live thumbnails. It's a nice touch - while it doesn't add much when it comes to functionality, it's much easier to jump between windows than before.

Another great notion is the ability to 'Request desktop sites'. This means that while the Android browser might default to the mobile version of some internet websites, some users will need the full content.

Simply tap the relevant option in the menu and you'll get the full flavour instantly, which is very useful for the kind of sites that won't let you jump to the main page easily (BBC iPlayer springs to mind).

Camera : 

The camera on the Android 4.0 system is much upgraded again, after some real leaps forward from the likes of Éclair and Gingerbread.

The settings are the same as before, with the likes of white balance, exposure and Scenes all inbuilt into the OS. The Scene modes are probably the least important of the lot, as only Night Mode really offers up anything in the way of discernible difference.

However, we liked tinkering about with the exposure settings to capture our shots - this yielded some real differences.

The big talking point of the new camera app on the Galaxy Nexus is the zero shutter lag, which is simply ace. It's up there with the iPhone 4S in terms of speed (and probably just beats it, to be honest) and means you can take some cracking shots in the blink of an eye.

However, you do sacrifice auto focus to achieve this - but if it's a well-lit scene, you shouldn't have any issues.

The other new feature is the panorama mode, which does as you'd imagine: helps you capture widescreen shots. The phone will help you by telling you to go faster and slower to capture the picture, but the results can be erratic.

Android 4.0 now has a built in editing tool as well, meaning you can alter the quality of your shots very easily - it might not be a full editing suite, but does come up with some nifty ways to tweak your snaps to improve them before never showing them to anyone ever again.

It should be noted we're trying all this on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which is a very powerful phone. Should the same options be offered on single-core devices with a lot less RAM, we doubt the same shutter speed could be achieved.

Video recorder

The video recording has also been improved thanks to the Ice Cream Sandwich update, with the ability to record in time lapse mode, set the white balance and also add in silly video effects too.

We're impressed with the way the latter works, with the phone able to track your face and keep things like a big nose on the screen at all times. Is it useful? No - but it's very 'Google' in the frippery it brings to the phone.

It's likely some of these features won't make it to the less powerful phones, as they'll require a little more raw power - but we were impressed with the 1080p footage captured on the Nexus camera.

Media : 

The media capabilities of Ice Cream Sandwich have been much improved in our eyes, with all aspects of the media experience updated to make it that much easier to manoeuvre through your phone.

While some areas could still do with tweaking, we're a world away from the super-basic music app and complete lack of video player on the first Android release.

Music

The music player on Ice Cream Sandwich has been completely overhauled to make it more in keeping with the super-blue theme that pervades throughout the OS.

Video

The video portal has taken on a much larger significance from Google since it unveiled its movie download service, and as such your personal collection will be boosted too.

The new red-themed offering sees you taken to a dual-tabbed arena: one the left side, all the videos you've rented from Android Market, and the right all your personal videos.

Books

The Books app is pre-installed in the Galaxy Nexus, and is set to be a staple feature of the Android 4.0 OS too.

It's one of the better e-reading experiences on a mobile phone no matter what the size of the screen - the page turning animations lend a very book-esque experience that many will enjoy.

Verdict : 

Google has offered up data management too - you'll be able to set a limit to how much data the phone uses, with warnings and updates on which apps are the most byte-hungry. This is the sort of thinking smartphone users will love.

We liked

The overall look and feel of Android has been streamlined, and that's a real plus in our eyes. Google's OS might be a world-conqueror right now, but that doesn't mean people always know how to use it in the same way they might an iPhone.

Things like contact pictures in the notifications bar, the lack of hardware buttons and moving settings to always be accessible are the sort of things many will love, plopping things where you intuitively expect them to be.

The internet browser's improvements to include desktop sites and offline reading are welcome too - anything that gives the user extra control is a good thing in our opinion.

We disliked

One of our larger gripes with Ice Cream Sandwich is, at times, the over-simplicity. Things like the video player being nothing more than a slider and play button are fine, but we expect to be able to do more with the app as we see fit.

There's also the issue of how the OS will work on less-powerful devices - will the fancy animations and services be as palatable on something that costs less than £100?

The other gripes are truly minor: support for file types, no place for Google Wallet as yet, too few home screens and no way to see them all at once.

These are things that will be fixed with updates or manufacturers simply improving on the OS in the months to come.

Verdict

Google needed to make sure it kept its OS refreshed and current, and Ice Cream Sandwich ticks that box in so many ways.

It's worth remembering that this is the foundation for manufacturers to go and build on - there's a lot more to come in the next 12 months.

However, if this is the platform Google will be using on all Motorola devices when the acquisition is complete then it's a good enough OS in its own right.

In terms of how good you'll think Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich is, it all boils down to personal choice. We're excited to see how manufacturers will customise it and extol the virtues to improve media or the home networking options, but others will simply be huge fans of the simplicity - our score is a mixture of the tools Google has offered up and the base level of performance on show.

But make no mistake - Ice Cream Sandwich is the most accessible and easy-to-learn OS from Google, and that's going to be key in the wars against Apple and Microsoft.