Google has dropped some interesting information about Ice Cream Sandwich, the next version of Android at its Google I/O conference. We'll update this article with more information on the new Android as soon as we get it.
It talked about the new OS during the Opening keynote speech of the Google I/O conference in San Francisco.
Real Ice Cream Sandwiches aren't exactly prevalent in the UK - we have wafers - so if you want to see a real Ice Cream Sandwich, you'd better do some scrolling.
As we reported from Google's keynote at Mobile World Congress, Google's mantra for the OS is "one OS everywhere" – it will be a single version of Android running across phones and tablets, unlike Android 3.0 Honeycomb that only runs on tablets.
That's why it's a Sandwich y'see.
Will Ice Cream Sandwich be Android 2.4 or Android 4.0?
The new version may be called Android 2.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, although surely as a unifying OS bringing together Android 2.x and Android 3.0 Honeycomb, it would make more sense to be Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich - the jury's out on that one.
Ice Cream Sandwich release date
The Ice Cream Sandwich UK release date is late 2011. Indeed, it looks like we'll get it on some new Android devices launching Q4 this year - so in time for Christmas.
UPDATE: On 9 August 2011, we reported that the Ice Cream Sandwich release date could be this October, according to an anonymous source.
UPDATE: On 7 September Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt confirmed that the Ice Cream Sandwich release date will be "released in October/November."
Ice Cream Sandwich interface
Ice Cream Sandwich will bring all the interface loveliness of Android 3.0 Honeycombto Android smartphones. Android phone users will get the updated app launcher, holographic user interface, interactive and new homescreen widgets plus the multi-tasking panel.
ANDROID 3.0: This interface magic will be coming to Android Ice Cream Sandwich
On 12 August we saw a batch of leaked screenshots of Ice Cream Sandwich.
Android Police and Roots Wiki seem to have come up with an odd cross-site team up to leak four pretty plausible screengrabs of the latest version of Google's mobile OS, which will likely be Android 4.0.
Ice Cream Sandwich features
Google says Ice Cream Sandwich is its "most ambitious release to date" and will incorporate all the best bits of Honeycomb, the Android tablet OS, and make them useable on smartphones too.
But Ice Cream Sandwich is about more than just the user interface and it will bring all the new Android 3.1 features to phones. This new update means Android tablets will also be able to act as a USB hub and you'll be to hook up devices such as mice and keyboards and game controllers to tablets and smartphones.
Google is also intending to make life easier for developers by releasing a new set of APIs that will help them to scale their apps across the various sizes of Android devices - Google acknowledges that it's important for developers to be able to design apps that will work across 3.5-inch smartphones up to 10.1-inch tablets.
During the Google Google I/O keynote those on stage also showed off 3D headtracking using the front-mounted camera so you can figure out who is speaking and focus on them while on a video call. Face detection will be a key feature in the OS.
Ice Cream Sandwich specification
Google's Mike Claren said, "we want one OS that runs everywhere."
Smartphone users will also get an expanded multitasking tool, including a system manager that handles your open resources for you so you won't run out of memory or be prompted to quit an application on the tablet.
Android 3.1 also means you can expand the size of a scrollable home screen widget, while existing scrollable widgets can also be upgraded by devs with a couple of lines of code.
SWEET: Google's inspiration for Android Ice Cream Sandwich [Image credit: Flickr/Blue Bunny]
Ice Cream Sandwich requirements
There's no word yet on minimum hardware requirements, though this will certainly have implications for upgrading existing handsets to the new OS. Speaking of which…
Ice Cream Sandwich upgrades
Google is introducing new guidelines in which it promises OS updates for the first 18 months for existing handsets. So Ice Cream will be coming to some of the more powerful handsets released during 2011.
"Together we'll create guidelines for how quickly devices will get updated after new android platforms and for how long they'll continue to get updated.," said Google's Vic Gundotra at Google I/O.
"New devices from these partners will receive the latest Android updates for 18 months after first launch, if the hardware allows it. We think this is really great news for users, we think it's excellent for developers and really great for the entire industry."
The move is in response to accusations that Android is becoming too fragmented and it has announced an alliance of (US-only for now) networks and manufacturers who have vowed to provide more timely updates. No longer will you get left behind.
Samsung UK has also told TechRadar that it is working to bring faster updates to users.
"We saw a lot of comments saying 'I want my upgrade, when do I get my upgrade?'," says Hiroshi Lockheimer, director of engineering at Google.
"There's no common expectation set of how this would work, so we can at least establish some form of expectation for the whole community - users and developers.
"We certainly want this to be an international, global thing. We announced Vodafone;you can expect another wave of announcements around that."
Ice Cream Sandwich is open source
We also know that Google is intending to make Ice Cream Sandwich fully open source. It didn't do this with Android 3.0 Honeycomb in an attempt to make things more consistent.
"It's more manageable to start small and get bigger," says Andy Rubin, senior vice president of Mobile at Google.
"It's an open invitation; there's no reason not to have everybody in [The Open Handset Alliance] - but I want to hit the ground running, I don't want to take a lot of time on building a list of names."
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