Samsung and Google jointly announced the very first Android 4.0 (ICS) smartphone in Hong Kong.
They did not get too original to name the device. Remember the Nexus S and Galaxy S series? Well, the smartphone is named Galaxy Nexus.
The phone features a dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP4460 processor, a 4.65″ super AMOLED plus display (1280×720), LTE/HSPA+ network support, 1080p video recoding, NFC, barometer and more.
It will be sold in the US, Europe and Asia (including Japan and China) in November.
After Samsung showcased the smartphone, Google presented the new Android 4.0 (ICS).
3 Design principles:
- Beautiful: Enchant me
- Easy: Simplify my life
- Powerful and Smart
Here are the main points I gatherer of Android 4 presentation:
- The new UI uses the Roboto font.
- They removed the physical buttons on the smartphone.
- Everything is now done with gestures.
- It looks like Honeycomb for smartphone with stacks and widgets.
- Widgets are re-sizable
- Screenshot is supported
- New notifications faster to access
- Improved soft keyboard larger and more responsive with inline spell checker
- Improved Speech to text recognition (Speak to text)
- Face Unlock: No more password, it recognizes your face to authorize access.
- Android Browser: New tab support, mobile/desktop website request, offline reading, incognito mode
- Gmail: 2 line previews, new action bar for direct access to most common actions, offline search
- Calendar app: pinch to zoom in/out, swipe to change day…
- Better data usage transparency and control: useful for 3G data usage. Set a threshold to prevent going over your limit. See bandwidth usage per app.
- Camera: Social sharing, automatic detection of people (auto-focus), zero shutter lag, panorama capture, instant upload to Google+ (optional), 1080p video recording with continuous focus, zoom while recording, time lapse and video snapshots.
- New photo editing tools
- Gallery app: sort by people, location,etc…
- People app: photos of contacts in “magazine” style, social networks,
- Better app integration: e.g. Call or contact via social networks within gmail.
- Android beam: Sharing with NFC technology (SNEP I guess). You can share contacts, web page, maps etc…
Android 4.0 SDK is already available right now.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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