Google Working with HTC on Ice Cream Sandwich Nexus Phone?

Tweet
Some leaks suck. Your water bill goes up, its a mess, carpet can get ruined. Some leaks are freaking awesome. They reveal new phones, bring us pics of said phones and make me geek out for hours on end! This is the second kind. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Nexus 3.


This leak, courtesy of a brave soul in the Android Dev Labs, brings us an early look at a prototype of the HTC manufactured 3rd Nexus phone which we expect to launch with Ice Cream Sandwich late this year. Let’s see what we’ve got. First, as you can see above, there is a distinct lack of the usual hardware buttons. Ice Cream Sandwich is supposed to bring Honeycomb UI elements to phones, and it appears this includes the trading of hardware buttons for the action bar. While it is hidden by the thumb, there is also a front facing camera.
While this is obviously not a finished product, especially considering Ice Cream Sandwich is a ways off still, there are still a few more jewels to gleam here. First it was also noted that Google is testing both an HSPA+ and Sprint CDMA version of the phone, indicating we may see the phone’s initial launch be to multiple carriers. Also, since Google’s changed its mind over hero phones before, a la the Xperia Play, we only know that HTC is being considered.
As we draw closer to the end of the year, expect more details and a more solid idea of who will be building the next Nexus. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a phone to go drool over.
[via TechHog]

Read More

What Do You Think of Google Ice Cream Sandwich OS?

Tweet
During Google I/O 2011 in San Francisco, the Google guys demonstrated the upcoming newest of their mobile operating systems, Android Ice Cream Sandwich, and the word is that Ice Cream Sandwich will be a universal OS for both smartphones and tablets, so as the Google guys say…one OS Everywhere.
According to an article over on Engadget, Ice Cream Sandwich will join Android 2.3 Gingerbread and the tablet centric Android 3.0 Honeycomb to play nice on the smallest Android smartphone to the biggest Android tablets, probably why they call it sandwich.
The Google guys apparently demonstrated a few new additions to the new operating system during the keynote including such stuff as camera focus shifting based on voice recognition and face tracking.
Also the Google guys have come up with peer-to-peer NFC sharing, something my colleague Lawrence reported on previously, although most of the details on the new OS are being kept under wraps.
So we’d love to hear from our readers in what they think of the Google Ice Cream Sandwich OS so far, so please cast your opinion in our commenting area below.

Read More

Ice Cream Sandwich – Full Google I/O Details

Tweet

Lets begin this chat by noting that they certainly did not say a whole heck of a lot. At the first hour-long keynote speech of the conference, Google whipped through a plethora of news bits, Ice Cream Sandwich certainly not the one winning the attention contest. The greatest moment was the reveal of the excellent logo mark that’ll be coming along with the update to Android, it and the name being a metaphor for exactly what the new system would be doing for the mobile OS: integrating it. Sandwiching it, if you will. It’s going to be oh – so – tasty.

The words were released from Google Product Manager, Hugo Barra’s mouth, that the “most ambitious release yet” would be coming in Ice Cream Sandwich form and that this update would not only act as a tie for all screen sizes, those on handsets, tablets, Google TV, and the lot, but that it would make for a much easier world for developers to live in. A single API framework for what may be the easiest Android version to develop for yet. No more Honeycomb specific apps for you!

“We want one OS that runs everywhere.”
That’s what Mike Claren of the Android engineering team said whilst presenting this version of the OS for the first time during the first keynote at Google I/O 2011. One of the first big points Claren had on making this one OS a possibility for developers is that Google would be taking the “state of the art” features as created for Honeycomb, UI improvements especially, and bringing them to the entire platform, for all devices. This includes new holographic UI, multitasking UI, launcher, richer widgets, advanced applications, and everything in-between.

And what’s best? This new version of Android wont have any new hardware requirements. That means it’ll be able to work on older handsets galore!
Claren went on to note that Google is investing heavily in what he called an Advanced App Framework. This means insulating developers from the differences in all of the different devices Android can be run on, so Google is adding new API to the framework to help all you developers out there scale your user interfaces across all the different sized screens and devices toting them. New components are being added to the Action Bar (the one you see in Honeycomb) that’ll be able to reconfigure themselves to work with whatever space is available to them.

On top of THAT, more energy is being put into developing tools (the talk about this specifically being done on the 11th of May at 3PM PST, for those keeping track,) and of course, without even thinking about it everyone should have already known – Ice Cream Sandwich will be open source.
For Ice Cream Sandwich (or perhaps before it, Claren isn’t too specific,) are the following new features: Developed by Google’s Technology Extraction Team in Roswell New Mexico — weird? Claren says it’s totally true – wild, crazy! The first element is thus:

Head Recognition Software

This technology can detect your head, not just your face, recognizing not only where your head is, but where you’re looking. This tech runs on the GPU, this currently meaning that it’ll work at 500 frames per second – quick! This tech is demonstrated by Anand Agarawata who shows off a white tablet with several objects on it displayed on the screen of a Motorola XOOM tablet moving in accordance with his head. Wacky!

Eyes, Nose, and Mouth Recognition Software

In another demonstration by Anand on the XOOM, a button is pressed for mouth, nose, and eyes, one by one, expanding each of them in turn instantly, transmitting the image to the screen via a mirror sort of situation. Basically just a piece of candy for now, but you can see the possibilities, I’m sure.

Virtual Camera Operator

This app, or functionality, or whatever you’d like to call it at this point, is able to detect a person speaking in a video that the device its on is recording and focus on them. What does that mean? Anand and his good pal Hugo Barra, (Product Management Director for Android,) demonstrate this functionality by both speaking into the front-facing camera of the Motorla XOOM. When either of them speaks, the camera zooms in on that person relatively smoothly, then back to whoever is speaking next in turn.






















 

Read More

Google announces Ice Cream Sandwich for Q4 2011, for smartphones and tablets alike

Tweet

"One OS that runs everywhere." There you have it, folks! Some fancy new additions are being demonstrated right now, including camera focus shifting on voice recognition. 

Read More

Android Ice Cream Sandwich Confirmed [Even More For Real This Time]

Tweet

You know how all the bigtime Android iterations are named after desserts? Do you also see how the titles of these deserts have been released in alphabetical order? These Android titles go like so: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, and Honeycomb. This last version is the first tablet-specific version of Android and should, based on what we know at the moment, be considered as being developed aside from the main Android bloodline. That said, the next version’s name has been “leaked” by a Google developer by the name of Romain Guy: Ice Cream Sandwich.

See, I TOLD YOU man, I TOLD YOU. Actually Andy Rubin told you (sort of) back in January of this year in a conversation with Jason Kincaid. Have a look at that old post and continue on to the following: a code issue inside the subject of Gradients in Honeycomb. In this short and sweet conversation, official Android worker Romain Guy notes the following: “A bug fix will be provided in Ice Cream Sandwich.”

This changes everything! Actually it doesn’t really change anything, but it’s fun to know that the version of Android that will make some big strides to combine both versions of Android now has a sandwichy name. As Eric Schmidt said back at Mobile World Congress 2011: “We have OS called gingerbread for phones, we have an OS being previewed now for tablets called Honeycomb. The two of them… you can imagine the follow up will start with an I, be named after dessert, and will combine these two.”

Tasty enough? Totally tasty. Then of course there’s the most empirical evidence of all: if there were to be a giant Froyo sculpture out in front of the Googleplex and there were to be a giant dish of Ice Cream, there would be some confusion. If the Ice Cream is a big sandwich instead, all of that confusion just melts away like the tasty, tasty treat it is. ALSO, the hero image in this post comes from Google circa 2006. Still yummy.

 

Read More