Today, the presentation of the new Galaxy Nexus phone from Samsung, and with it the new Android 4.0 operating system, the so–called Ice Cream Sandwich, took place.
The presentation was focused primarily on users, therefore, how the new OS will affect the life of developers and how much it will simplify their lives, it is necessary to understand.
The only thing that is clear is that this is really a new platform, unified for both smartphones and tablets. In many ways, Google is betting on this, planning to attract more Android developers with this simplification and thus catch up with Apple in terms of the number of applications.
For now, we want to announce the main innovations that will simplify the life of users.
The new operating system was based on three principles: charm me, simplify my life and make me awesome. Therefore , in the new version of the OS appeared:
- the ability to use NFC technology (contactless data transfer) to transfer data between two Android phones by bringing them to each other – the so-called Android Beam;
- face recognition in order to unlock the phone, you just need to look into the front camera;
- a new design for many interface elements (perhaps this is the first step towards bringing all Google services to a single design) – the so-called ROBOTO;
- new keyboard with voice typing support;
- new standard widgets with scaling – that is, the user can change the scale of the widget himself;
- new browser with support for syncing bookmarks from Google Chrome;
- search by Gmail offline.
In a Google corporate blog, Andy Rubin, vice president of mobile services, said that “Ice Cream Sandwich will make Android easy to manage and beautiful and will take smart phones to a new level.”
The SDK is already available for app developers.