Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich Update: When and How

Massive amounts of raves and comparisons are increasingly being made between two great operating systems for smart phones and tablets that are in the process of launch or are evolving at this time. Both Apple’s iOS5 and Android 4.0 (code name: Ice Cream Sandwich) from Google are equally receiving the praises from their respective denizens of loyal subscribers, and the Android 4.0 isn’t due out until mid-November, although the SDK is available now for web developers to go to town building their applications for the marketplace.  So, here is the skinny, Android lovers:

Android 4.0

Most Android lovers would rarely appreciate Apple’s latest operating system, while Apple fanatics will never love anything remotely mentioned – let alone, connected – to Google’s Android operating system. But notwithstanding the catfight between the fan bases of the two operating systems, the two OS come with numerous interesting features and capabilities. Cupertino based tech giant was first to introduce iOS 5 days before it launched iPhone 4S into the market. The last time it had rolled out iPhone 4 and the new operating system on the same day, causing repeated problems and outages of its website for several days. So it had learnt its lessons quite well.

iOS 5 and ice cream sandwich come with many innovative, futuristic features no other platform compares to yet. Android 4 is the first unified version for tablets and smart phone and it comes with improved voice commands, and facial recognition features. On the other hand Apple’s latest operating system boasts of many great features including BlackBerry type messaging service called iMessage besides of course iCloud and Siri.

Android 4 or Ice Cream Sandwich and iOS 5 come with great voice commands features. Siri’s voice recognition app makes a real difference when it comes to voice commands. Many smart phone analysts say that Siri is going to evolve into a real game changer in favor of Apple and its iOS, though only time will tell if it alone can make such a great impact. One of the best features for both is the fact they are using cloud computing on a mobile level, which syncopates with the current flow of the computing era.  It is the next features, however, that blow the iOS 5 well out of the galaxy.

The Good Stuff

A few of the tech goodies included in the Ice Cream Sandwich update are an NFC-enabled feature called Android Beam, offline search in Gmail, new lock screen features and a fancy unlocking method called “Face Unlock,” which uses facial recognition to ensure strangers can’t use your phone without permission, which is perhaps the first step we are taking into the deep future of face and hand scan recognition.  Sure, even Apple OS update came with over 200 feature updates including Tweet Everything, a feature that automates picture and page sharing simply by logging into Twitter and letting the iOS 5 do the rest.  Beautiful feature if your whole life revolves around your phone.

Photos seem to be a growing part of our lives, and both OS systems have that covered. With the Ice Cream Sandwich, Google has given users a great many new photo tools that were not available in older versions of the OS. The best feature of Ice Cream Sandwich is the photo-editing tools in the image gallery, which makes sharing your photos through social media a little more colorful. Also, these tools help in improving many photos that include red-eye reduction, straightening, and hipster filters. On the flip side, iOS 5 comes with great photo editing tools that many further improve the quality of pictures. The new OS 5 from Apple lets you switch between the camera and camcorder modes, besides of course between the front and rear cameras. So both camera features seem to pan out equally.

When comparing the iOS 5 and Ice Cream Sandwich side by side, we see each operating system borrow more heavily from each other and from other competitors. For the consumer, this simply means that their smartphones will start growing evermore powerful, and their choices for great smartphone ecosystems will imminently grow, too. It’s disheartening news for platform-makers, who need to advance their offerings to stay ahead and therefore relevant. And at the end of the day, Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich takes the cake in terms of cool, useable features that only seem to get more futuristic as the internet and mobile years crank on.