Prologue
Readers are drooling by the specs, looks & features of the
upcoming galaxy nexus prime. The most notable feature of the phone is
the latest Android version 4.0 (named as Ice-cream sandwich). Google
claims that Android ICS is a complete revolution & is a massive
improvement over the previous android versions. Although it consists the
best features of honeycomb & gingerbread, it is a complete
re-evaluation of the current versions & transformation into a
simpler & compact OS for users.
New Introductions
- Screenshots:
They can now be taken without the need to root the phone/ installing
apps. To take screenshots, hold the volume down key & press power
button.
- Android Beam:
It allows two Android smart phones to securely exchange Web pages,
contacts, media or even applications. This feature is based on NFC (Near
Field Communication) & can be considered an advanced ‘whatsapp’.
There’s no menu to open, application to launch, or pairing needed. Just
touch one Android-powered phone to another & tap to send.
- Mobile Web browser:
It syncs with your desktop or laptop Chrome bookmarks, it can save
pages for offline reading, and it can open upto 16 tabs at the same
time.
- Lock screen options:
these have been customized as well. User can now drag down the
notification bar, open camera without unlocking the phone. Also, It
provides more features when screen is locked.
- Network Data:
In the Settings app, charts show the total data usage on each network
type (mobile or Wi-Fi), as well as amount of data used by each running
application.
- Face Unlock:
It is a new screen-lock option that lets users to unlock their devices
with their faces, which is a completely new approach to securing the
device.
- Spell-checker: It locates and underlines errors while typing and suggests replacement words.
Changes
- User Interface: Menu styles, notification bar have been transformed. Virtual buttons & system bars are available across all apps.
- Font:
The most basic change that has been made is the font used in the
system. The new version of font used is called ‘Roboto’ which is the
perfect font version for high resolution screens.
- Gallery: The new gallery is easy to manage, share photos & videos. The gallery widget has also been improved.
- Voice Input Engine:
Learning a lesson from Siri (voice command feature of iPhone), the ICS
will be able to transcribe words & sentences spoken to the phone
into text format.
- Camera & Video: Camera user interface has been completely changed. New features like editing image before saving have been introduced.
- Notifications Management:
Users can now dismiss individual notifications, apps from the Recent
Apps list, and browser tabs with a simple swipe of a finger.
Availability
The galaxy nexus prime would be the first phone to use Android ICS
& is due for release this November. Ever since the Android ICS made
news people have been waiting for its source code, which after weeks of
waiting, has finally been released by Google. Availability of source
code means you will soon be able to get the latest updates for the
current version of Android running on your devices.
Epilogue
The new OS certainly looks good on paper & will definitely
re-define the Android devices. The simplest way to get a demo of new
looks of the Android ICS is by downloading the ICS theme available in
the android market. The theme is an accurate copy of the icons &
menu style of the ICS. After the launch of IOS5, a strong reply from
Google was inevitable.
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