18
Oct
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Adding to the heap of shiny new features brought to us in Ice Cream Sandwich, we've got a new lock screen, and of course the fabled virtual button bar.

The redesigned lock screen allows for simple unlocking, or unlocking to the camera app instantly (which, by the way, has zero shutter lag). That's not all it has to offer, though. Users can now swipe down the notification bar to get a peek at what's happening without unlocking their phone. Additionally, the time indicator in the upper right corner is now gone, eliminating the redundancy found in previous iterations of Android.

10-18-2011 7-26-11 PM

Next up is the virtual button bar, a feature that has been rumored since the very dawn of Ice Cream Sandwich rumors.

14
Jul
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It's a well-known fact that Android enthusiasts love benchmarks. When new devices hit our hands, what is one of the first things we do? Run benchmarks. It's how we compare devices to one another, and what we use to develop the standards on which future devices will be set. At this point, we use a set of benchmarking tools that have become clutch throughout the community: Quadrant, Linpack, SmartBench, etc.

Now, Qualcomm is getting into the benchmarking game with a new web benchmark called Vellamo that aims to judge device performance in areas that really matter: rendering, javascript, networking, and user experience.