First Look at the Highly Polished Android 4.0, "Ice Cream Sandwich" [Screenshot Tour]

By Whitson Gordon Oct 18, 2011 8:45 PM 30,134 61

Google just unveiled their new Nexus phone, the Galaxy Nexus, along with a preview of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, coming to phones next year. Here's a look at the creamy new update to the Android operating system.

Most of what's gone into Ice Cream Sandwich is polish, making Android slicker, easier to use, and (finally) more consistent across the board. It's mostly filled with small improvements and tweaks that Google rattled off pretty quickly, so we've listed our favorites here in bulleted form. This isn't a comprehensive list; this is just what Google demoed at today's event—so there's probably even more to come.

Google's made a lot of improvements in the way Android looks and feels, from the home screen to the notification drawer to the keyboard, including:

A new stylish lock screen, complete with facial recognition features that let you unlock your phone with a front-facing camera, as well as the ability to launch right into the camera with one gestureA bigger emphasis on consistency with the way gestures work. For example, in the app drawer, you now swipe left to right to see other pages of apps, more like the home screens.Widgets are now stored on another tab in the app drawer, making them easier to add to your home screen. They're also resizable.Folders are now easier to create and use. Just drag one app on top of another, iOS-style to create a folder. You can rearrange them in the folder the same way, and it's all very fluid.Ice Cream Sandwich's dock is customizable, and you can even put folders into it for quick access to apps and contacts.Screenshot taking is now built-in. You can snap one by pressing Volume down + Power. Finally.
Notifications (pictured) are prettier and a tad more useful, showing small contact pictures next to notifications pertaining to email, SMS messages, and so on.You can swipe from left to right to clear single notifications from the drawer, so your notifications aren't so cluttered. CyanogenMod users will be quite familiar with this feature.You can open the notification drawer from the lock screen, without unlocking your phone. This is actually very convenient.The new keyboard has better targeting, a simpler recommendations bar, and inline spell checking. Copy and paste has also been improved, and you can even select text and just drag it around within your message fluidly.Speech-to-text now decodes your phrases in real time. When you say a word, you see that word show up in the window, before you move on to the next one—you no longer have to finish an entire sentence before seeing it show up in the text window.A new default typeface, humorously labeled "Roboto" (but that actually looks pretty good)

Ice Cream Sandwich also sets the stage for button-less phones, à la the Honeycomb tablets. The Galaxy Nexus has no buttons on the front; it's all built-in to the OS. It also raises icon resolution, among other things, so it'll look good on higher-res phones—again, like the 4.65 inch, 1280x720 screen on the Galaxy Nexus.

The browser has a few nice features, but the biggest is certainly bookmark syncing with Chrome. Now, Android's browser will automatically use your Google account to sync all Chrome bookmarks to your phone. It also has a feature that'll take you from a web site's mobile page to the desktop page in one tap, which is really great. Tab management is similar to the old browser, but you can now "flick" tabs away to close them, which looks almost WebOS-like. And, lastly, it has a new "save for offline" feature for those articles you want to save for later. It won't tear out the article and make it more "readable", like Read It Later does, but rather save the entire page in its current state for offline viewing.

Gmail's entire interface has been revamped, featuring a very large, easy-to-read inbox with 2-line previews so you can more easily view your messages without even opening them. The action bar at the bottom has also improved, with simple buttons for creating a new message, viewing your labels, searching your inbox, and more. And, speaking of inbox search, Gmail now downloads the last 30 days worth of messages for searching, a value that you can change as much as you want in the settings. Lastly, when you're viewing a message, you can quickly transition to the next message with a swipe gesture—going back to their whole point of "making gestures consistent across the OS". It's a nice touch.

The new calendar app is also nice, mostly in the realm of touch gestures. Like Gmail, you can swipe from side to side to move from day to day, and you can even pinch to zoom in on a specific block of the day. The whole thing is very smooth and fluid, moving as your fingers pinch to the exact block you specify.

You can now track your data usage from Android's settings, and it looks really slick. Not only do you have the typical "this is how much data you've used this month" chart, as well as app-by-app usage to see which apps are the worst offenders, but you can pinpoint any block of time on the graph and see data usage for just that timeframe. For example, if there's a huge jump in data usage over a two-day period of time, you can "zoom in" on those two days and see which apps were using the most data during just those two days. It's a really effective way of tracking your usage. You can also add warnings for when you reach a certain threshhold, or even cut off data usage entirely when you go over a certain level—ensuring that you never go over your data cap without your say so.

The new camera app is designed to be fast and easy to use—they've minimized shutter lag, meaning the camera opens quickly and takes pictures instantly, without any loading time between shots. It's difficult to tell how well this will work on non-Galaxy Nexus phones, but the demo on the Galaxy Nexus looked fantastic. You can also access the camera right from the lock screen, making taking those spur-of-the-moment pictures near instantaneous.

The camera also has a built-in panorama mode, in which you just scan the camera from left to right to take a panorama shot—none of this taking-multiple-images-that-sort-of-fit-together business. It'll automatically stitch them together for you. Video recording has also improved, with continuous focus, zoom-while-recording, and time lapse features, not to mention the ability to take snapshots while you're recording video.

As far as the Gallery goes, you get this great "magazine-style" view with large thumbnails for your albums. You can browse your library by album, by location, or even by the people you tag in your photos. It also includes a simple photo editor, letting you remove red eye, crop, tilt, and even add Instagram-like filters to your photos.

The new contacts app—dubbed "People"—also brings this "magazine style", large-thumnailed view to Android. It almost looks Metro-like even, with the solid colors and giant tiles. Even clicking a contact card in another app will bring up their quick contact card with a giant picture of their face, which is pretty good looking. And, when someone calls you, you'll see a full screen image of their face, not this tiny-low-res-thumbnail crap that's been in Android for so long. Google Voice messages seem to show up directly in the people app, hinting that Google Voice integration might be much tighter in Ice Cream Sandwich.

One of the cooler new "people" features is the ability to send canned text messages when someone calls you. If someone calls you and you're busy, you can just send them a text message that says "I'm busy, call you later" (or whatever you want) with a simple swipe gesture. There are currently apps that'll do this for you, but it's really nice to have it built in.

Last, but not least, is Android Beam, a new "Bump"-like feature built into Android. If your phone has near-field communication (NFC) capabilities, like the Galaxy Nexus, you can just touch two phones together to send data instantly. You can send articles, maps, or even Market links from one phone to another just by opening it up on one phone and touching the two together, back-to-back. It's one of those features that's very cool, but not so practical yet—especially since not a lot of phones have NFC built-in.

That's probably not everything you'll see in Ice Cream Sandwich, but it's a hell of a good start to a seriously polished iteration of Android. It may not have the most new features, but what it lacks in new, snazzy features it more than makes up for in ease of use and fluidity—I have a feeling this will reinvigorate my love for Android. We'll post the video of the presentation as soon as Google does, but for now, discuss your favorite new features (or the things you wished you'd see) in the comments.

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Ubuntu Linux 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" Released; Here's What's New [Screenshot Tour]

By Whitson Gordon Oct 13, 2011 7:30 AM 113,566 205

Like most Ubuntu updates, version 11.10 isn't a huge overhaul; rather, it improves on the big changes made in 11.04, by cleaning up the Dash, overhauling the Ubuntu Software Center, and bringing in some new default software. Here's a look at the biggest changes in the newest version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 11.04 ushered in some grand changes to the default Ubuntu desktop, most notably the new Unity interface. 11.10 refines some of Unity's rougher edges, while adding in a few new convenience features as well—many focusing on the cloud. We won't go through every little change here (as there are a lot of small ones), but here are some of the bigger ones you'll notice off the bat, and (mostly) be thankful for.

The Dash, introduced in Ubuntu 11.04, is a nice little launcher that gives you quick access to your applications and files through a quick search. It had a few little clunks, though, that made it annoying to use in 11.04. Now, the Dash only has one button, at the top of your dock, that opens the entire Dash—no more separate launchers for Unity Places. Instead, searching files and applications are "tabs" within the Dash itself, called "lenses", and they've added a new music lens so you can quickly start up your tunes from the Dash. In addition, the Dash has its own window controls, so you can easily maximize it if you want. It's also slightly transparent, and colors itself according to your background wallpaper, which is a nice touch.

The really cool thing about the dash is that it integrates with the new Ubuntu Software Center. So, while you can type in the name of any app on your system to launch it immediately from the dash, you can also see apps you don't have yet. For example, if you type in "Browser", you'll see Firefox (which you can launch) and Chromium (which you have choice to install right then and there).

The new Software Center looks fantastic, and is much faster than it was before. It actually looks remarkably like the Mac App Store (I guess we shouldn't be surprised), but it's easy to browse, easy to install apps, and actually something I could see myself using now. There are still some rough edges, but overall it's a great update—you can just tell which parts didn't get as much attention as others (browsing from the front page is great, but as soon as you enter a category, it gets a little overly plain).

The number of apps is pretty large, more than you'd expect for an "app store" on Linux, which is nice. In addition, you might be surprised to notice some pay apps in there, which really switches up the dynamic of a Linux app store, which usually only carries free, open source apps. Whether that's a good thing or not is open to opinion, but it's there.

Along with this overhaul is the surprising change that Synaptic is no longer included with Ubuntu by default. This may enrage some Linux veterans, but for what it's worth, you can easily install it from the Software Center first thing and move on with your life. It's just a somewhat shocking change when you boot up and search for Synaptic only to find nothing.

At long last, Ubuntu's included Thunderbird as the default mail client, and it integrates very nicely with the Ubuntu desktop. You can access it right from the messaging menu, get desktop notifications, and even compose new messages by right-clicking on its dock icon. It isn't all-encompassing—for example, calendar integration with Lightning is still missing—but it's a very welcome change if you prefer Thunderbird to Evolution.

Deja Dup is also now the default backup tool, which should integrate with the GNOME Control Center and Ubuntu One. And, with Ubuntu One's new Android, Windows, and iOS clients, it's become a much more viable tool for file syncing, backup, music streaming, and so on (with 5GB of free space!).

From the "really small changes that everyone's yelling about" department: When you maximize a window, the window controls disappear along with the File, Edit, and other application menus, showing only the name of the app in the menu bar. Once you hover over them in the top left hand corner of the screen, they reappear, and you can minimize, restore, or close the window, they just aren't there unless your mouse is. It seems like a weird change, especially if you didn't like it when 11.04 made the application menus disappear, but that's the way it is.

The new Alt+Tab switcher looks much prettier than before, and even integrates window previews if you have multiple windows open for a specific app. Other than that, it doesn't work a whole lot differently than before, but like the rest of 11.10, brings a certain polish to the OS that makes it more enjoyable to use (without, you know, going overboard like Windows' Flip 3D switcher did).

GDM is no longer the default login screen for Ubuntu; instead, a new login screen called LightDM (along with a pretty snazzy theme that goes with Ubuntu) will be your default greeting when you start up. It's a bit cleaner and prettier than GDM was, so it's actually a nice change, if a little surprising at first. The biggest change to the login screen, though? You no longer have the option of booting into Ubuntu Classic. Unity and Unity 2D (for lower-powered machines) are now the only options included by default. If you want something else (like the GNOME 3 shell, which still differs pretty greatly from the old version of Ubuntu), you can install it from the Software Center.

Those aren't the only changes in Ubuntu 11.10, but those are some of the bigger updates you'll notice off the bat. If you want to check out the new version for yourself, head to Ubuntu's home page to download a live CD, and let us know what you think in the comments.

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