Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich review

The next version of each smartphone's operating system is always the best. We impatiently wait for the latest and greatest firmware to come around, expecting it to liberate us from the shackles of last year's code and features that haven't shown up yet. This happens incessantly with Google's Android OS, andversion 4.0 -- unveiled at this year's I/O conference in May -- is no different. Known as Ice Cream Sandwich (referred to henceforth as ICS), the last word in the title indicates the merging of Gingerbread, the most recent phone platform, and Honeycomb, the version optimized for use on tablets. We knew this much, but were otherwise left with conjecture as to how the company planned to accomplish such a feat -- and what else the new iteration had in store.


But now the time of reckoning is upon us, and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus -- Android 4.0's mother ship -- is slowly spreading across the globe, its users being treated to this year's smartphone dessert. ICS is one of the largest and most important upgrades we've witnessed from Android since its humble beginnings, making a huge change in user experience as well as a massive number of bullet points on the list of features. Now that we've had the opportunity to take it for a spin, where does it stand in the ranks of mobile operating systems? Follow us beneath as we dig into the layers of this sweet sandwich. 

On skins and stock ICS

In beginning our deep-dive of ICS, we'll be quick to point out that, much like the HTC-made Nexus Oneand the Samsung Nexus S preceding it, the Galaxy Nexus is running the pure vanilla and completely unskinned iteration of the OS it's ushering in. This means we're looking at ICS the way Google designed it, and not an OEM's interpretation such as on Samsung's TouchWiz, HTC's Sense or Motorola's not-so-Blur. Just as before, different skins lying on top of ICS are like having 31 flavors of ice cream: your experience with a Neapolitan-flavored sandwich may vary widely from one with Rocky Road inside.

We won't pretend to know what changes these OEMs will make to the user experience, but rest assured that they'll be just as rampant as ever. While we're definitely fond of the improvements Google's made to ICS as a whole, it'll be intriguing to see how widely the interface differs from phone to phone.

Booting up

Do you remember the last time you booted up a brand new Android device? It was a sweet moment, we'll bet, and the setup procedure remains largely unchanged, as you still have to either sign up for a Google account or throw in your existing login codes. New to the process, however, is the option to tie a Google+ account to your device as well and lets you enter credit card information for Market purchases. You're also given the choice of watching a tutorial meant to show you the ICS ropes. Whether you choose to view it or not, your phone's now good to go. The handset begins to sync in the background after you exit the bootup menus, a process that will take several minutes; we strongly recommend you connect your device to a WiFi network during setup, since ICS will hook you up with email, contacts, calendar entries, books, Picasa albums and Chrome bookmarks -- all data-intensive activities that eat gigabytes for breakfast. Fortunately you can still dive right into the enjoyment of your new phone without having to wait until the syncing is all done. Just don't panic if Bob Johnson isn't in your list of contacts yet.

Here's a handy tip if you want to take advantage of ICS's accessibility features (discussed in more detail later): when you boot up the phone for the first time and reach the Getting Started page, put your finger on the top left corner of the screen and draw a clockwise square. Doing so will activate all of the accessibility features and take you directly into a tutorial on how to use them.