Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 - 17/27 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Dec

[Initial Impressions] The Galaxy Nexus Is Rocking My World

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Galaxy Nexus, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, News, Verizon Wireless

Finally. It's real.

After all the rumored release dates, and Verizon's best efforts to sweep this phone under the carpet, the Galaxy Nexus for Verizon is real. It's real and I have one.

I picked it up on launch day at 8am, at a pretty busy Verizon store. I went on a long Ice Cream Sandwich bender, and now I'm here to report my first impressions.

First off, forget all that technical Pentile stuff. I want to hate Pentile, I really do, but the screen is just gorgeous. I'm normally the type to complain about Pentile's checkerboard layout, but the pixels are so tiny I just can't see it.

Dec

[Update: Manual Update Instructions Included] Ice Cream Sandwich Now Rolling Out To The GSM Nexus S

Posted by Cameron Summerson in News, Nexus S (Crespo/Soju)

Well, that didn't take long. Here are the instructions to you your Nexus S rocking ICS right now. Do not try this on the CDMA Nexus S!

Download the OTA Package
Rename it to update.zip
Copy it to the root of the internal storage
Power off the device, hold Volume Up and Power to reboot into the bootloader
Select "recovery," then hit the power button
Once the warning triangle appears, hold the power button and hit volume up
Select "apply update from /sdcard" and choose the update.zip
Once the process is finished, simply choose "reboot system now"

Once it reboots, BAM!

Dec

Android 4.0.3 Announced, Brings Bug Fixes And New APIs For Developers

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, News

Looks like the incremental updates for Android 4.0 are rolling along nicely at this point - the VZW Galaxy Nexus received the update to Android 4.0.2 yesterday, and now Google has announced version 4.0.3. As you may expect, it crushes many bugs that have been found in current builds, along with throwing some optimizations into the mix.

This update will also bring some new goodies to the table for developers in the form of new APIs:

Social stream API in Contacts provider: Applications that use social stream data such as status updates and check-ins can now sync that data with each of the user’s contacts, providing items in a stream along with photos for each.

Dec

Sony Ericsson Releases Alpha ICS ROM For Certain Unlocked Xperia Devices

Posted by Cameron Summerson in News, Xperia Arc (Anzu, X12), Xperia Neo (Hallon), Xperia Ray (Urushi, ST18i)

There must be something weird going on with manufacturers lately - first Huawei released an alpha build of ICS for the Honor, and now Sony Ericsson (soon to be just Sony) has released an ICS ROM for certain unlocked Xperia devices, including the Arc S, Neo V, and Ray.

Since it's an alpha ROM, it's not made for day-to-day use, as it is limited to just a few functions at the moment. As far as things that aren't working are concerned, here is the list, as provided by SE in the official blog post:

Google Mobile Services (GMS) apps are not included (for example, Gmail, Google Maps, etc.).

Dec

[Video] This Is What The Galaxy S II Ice Cream Sandwich Update (Android 4.0.1 KP1) With TouchWiz Will Look Like - Flash An Early Version Now If You Dare

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Galaxy S II, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, News, Samsung, Videos

An early version of the Ice Cream Sandwich ROM built by Samsung itself and complete with TouchWiz has been leaked today to the folks at SamMobile. They've quickly put together this video to demonstrate exactly what Samsung has been cooking up for the upcoming update - and that would be a whole lot of TouchWiz on top of the beautiful ICS UI we've been admiring so far:

Ever since I got the SGS II in the U.S., I don't mind TouchWiz as much (though those click sounds make me cringe every time), but it's kind of starting to look and feel old compared to Ice Cream Sandwich itself.

Dec

[Update: Sony Ericsson Joins In On The Fun] Motorola Details What Needs To Be Done Before Existing Devices Will Receive Ice Cream Sandwich

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Motorola, News

Motorola has already let us know that it will be bringing ICS to most of its high-end devices, and now we have the details of what goes on behind the scenes to make an update like that happen. The blog post explaining the process gives a good look at the whole shebang, from start to finish.

Ready for a glimpse into Moto's world? Check it out:

1. Merge and adapt the new release for different device hardware architecture(s) and carrier customizations

This means that we take the source code and incorporate it into upgrades for devices on which this can perform well, along with making sure the carrier requirements are met. Silicon partners such as Qualcomm, TI, and nVidia adapt this to their chipsets in parallel and we incorporate these as they become available.

Dec

MIPS Announces Sub-$100 Ice Cream Sandwich Tablet, Available Now

Posted by Cameron Summerson in News, Tablets

We've seen plenty of el-cheapo Android tablets hit the market in the last several months - most of which are running a phone version of Android, with no access to the Market or other Google products. Looks like MIPS Technologies is in the game to change the way we look at budget tablets, as it just announced a $99 ICS tablet. Yeah - $99. With ICS. Soak it up.

The 7-inch tablet is equipped with a 1GHz single-core MIPS-based XBurst CPU, and has the features we've all come to expect from a modern tablet, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, dual cameras, HDMI out, and microSD card slot.

Dec

[Update: Maybe Not] HTC Customer Support Seems To Confirm Ice Cream Sandwich Update For MyTouch 4G In Early 2012

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, myTouch 4G (Glacier), News, T-Mobile

Although it wasn't among the select few HTC devices confirmed to be receiving Ice Cream Sandwich, we have reasons to believe that T-Mobile's myTouch 4G will indeed be receiving the update in early 2012, according to an HTC customer support representative. Here's the original message:

First I want to thank you for the amazing job you've done building and maintaining my phone. It's my favorite phone I've ever owned by far. I'm incredibly excited for android 4.0 (Ice cream sandwich) and am really hoping for the update to come to the T-mobile mytouch 4g. I absolutely love the phone and don't want to replace it with another. I'm emailing to request that the T-mobile mytouch 4g be put on the forefront of update candidates. Thank you again.

Dec

Google Employees Are Receiving Ice Cream Sandwich OTAs On Their Nexus S Phones - Dogfooding Has Begun

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, News, Nexus S (Crespo/Soju), Nexus S 4G (Crespo4g), Samsung

Google has started the dogfooding process of testing the Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" update for the Nexus S, according to one of Google employees Adel Saoud. Dogfooding is a practice of having company employees use products before releasing them to the public ("eat your own dog food" in this sense apparently originated in Microsoft back in 1988), thus weeding out bugs while the products are still revolving in a relatively contained environment.

The tweets and Google+ posts are now deleted, but thanks to several screenshots, re-shares, and caches, we can reconstruct these 2 messages that were posted by Adel:

Just got Ice-cream Sandwich update on my Nexus S & it's looking great :)

and

Yeah an OTA, but it's an early one for Google employees so we test it further so it's even more awesome when you guys get it.

Nov

[Updated: Not An Easter Egg But A Screensaver!] Weird, Star Wars-Like Light Speed Launcher Found Hidden In The Depths Of Ice Cream Sandwich

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Galaxy Nexus, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, News, Off-Topic, Videos

Apparently, this and Nyan Droid are both part of a new screensaver feature Google called "Android Dreams" that was disabled by them before Ice Cream Sandwich was released (presumably because it wasn't ready for prime time yet). Here is a picture of the re-enabled feature in CM9, courtesy of Steve Kondik who stopped by our G+ post.

We're not sure whether what you're about to see is yet another Easter egg in Ice Cream Sandwich (remember the Nyan Droid?) or the next amazing launcher that will do your dishes and fly you into space, but it turns out the stock ICS launcher actually has another launcher buried inside.