sandwich

Running a newly released version of Windows or Mac OS X on a 3-year-old personal computer is an unremarkable feat.

But it's a lot more difficult in the smartphone world, where hardware and software have been changing at a breakneck pace. That's why I recommend watching this brief demonstration of Ice Cream Sandwich, aka Android 4.0, on the first-generation Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 from October 2008.

XDA Developers forum member jcarrz1 posted the video and an alpha version of his OS build yesterday, nine days after Google released the Ice Cream Sandwich source code.

As you may expect, the new OS drags on the comparatively ancient hardware, with slow app launches and long lags between a touch action and the phone's response. But all the ICS apps work.

What doesn't work at this stage, jcarrz1 said: Wi-Fi networking, Bluetooth, and screen rotation. … Read more

Justin thinks Android is still to complex for beginners, Antuan says nice things about Apple, and someone crams a whole Android-based computer onto a USB key.

Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) | iTunes (320x180) | iTunes (640x360)

RSS (MP3) | RSS (320x180) | RSS (640x360)

NEWS:

-CONFIRMED: Samsung Galaxy Nexus U.S. Launch Is In December

-Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich review: Cool, confident, chaotic

-Android 4.0 supports mass storage, Galaxy Nexus does not

-Want Android 4.0? Wait 2 months, says Cyanogen

Samsung Mocks Apple Ad

-Google: 200 million Android devices now active worldwide

-After iPad, Kindle Fire most desired tablet, study finds… Read more

Android Ice Cream Sandwich offers up a new keyboard with new features to make typing easier and faster.

You may have seen some of the new keyboard features when viewing the Galaxy Nexus video, or maybe you've read about them online. Fortunately, you can skip the wait and get the new keyboard right now.

Notice: This version will only work on smartphones and is not configured for tablets at this time.

Step 1: Head to the Android Market and install Ice Cream Sandwich Keyboard, by johntanmi.

Step 2: Go back to your Home screen and press the Menu button, … Read more

Ice Cream Sandwich runs on tablets and smartphones--but thus far its debut has been a phone phenomenon only, what with the release of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus.

Now, though, Nvidia has released a promotional video showing Android 4.0 on a tablet. Specifically, on an Asus Transformer Prime, which uses the quad-core Tegra 3 processor. Oops, I mean five-core Tegra 3 processor--the fifth core is there for low-power moments when the quad-core power isn't needed.

Nvidia's demo, using Ice Cream Sandwich and built two days after Google released its source code, shows a number of features: the … Read more

Apple is likely to outshine Hewlett-Packard as the world's top PC maker before the second half of next year, says research firm Canalys, but it'll need some help from the iPad 3.

Currently the world's second-leading PC vendor, Apple has seen its share of the market jump to 15 percent from 9 percent over just the past year. That growth is largely due to heavy demand for the iPad, which Canalys considers a personal computer.

But fourth-quarter iPad shipments in the U.S. may take a hit from Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's … Read more

An Android engineer took to Reddit last week to address concerns spurred by the discovery that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus did not offer USB mass storage (UMS). As it turns out, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich does support the feature, but the device itself does not.

According to Google's Dan Morrill, UMS is available at a platform level, just so long as the hardware allows for removable storage cards.

UMS is a protocol that makes USB devices accessible to a host device (Android phone or tablet) to allow file transfers between the two. In other words, when enabled, it is easy to drag and drop files between a host device and a USB device, much as between drives on a computer.

For many smartphone owners the issue of UMS isn't much of an issue at all. Most new Android users probably aren't even aware of the option to sync files across other devices, but seasoned users have come to depend on the feature.

So if UMS is not available for the Galaxy Nexus, then what will all of these Android enthusiasts and early adopters do for file transfer?

Given that a vast majority of Android's user base runs Windows desktops and laptops, Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) will work quite nicely for music, photos, videos. Meanwhile, Mac users can download and install Android File Transfer, and the Linux community has PTP protocol. Although none of these might be as appealing as UMS, Morrill is optimistic that better options will soon appear.

Considering that the number of Android devices without removable storage is rather small, this entire argument could be a nonstarter. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is only the second major handset released without a microSD expansion slot, with the first being the Nexus S. … Read more

Although Flash has been a staple on Android, don't expect to find it in Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) just yet.

Speaking to Slashgear over the weekend, Google said that Ice Cream Sandwich will not come with Flash preinstalled nor will the platform be available in Android Market. The issue, Google told Slashgear, is that Adobe has yet to update its application to make it function properly on the new operating system.

Currently, Adobe's Flash Player only works with Android versions 2.2 to 3.2, according to its Android Market listing.

That should change soon, though. … Read more

With a new Google phone--and the first one to be delivered with Android 4.0 Ice Cream sandwich--on the horizon, the iPhone 4S rivalry is inevitable, and we've got some benchmark data to fan the flames of the feud.

The soon-to-be-released Samsung Galaxy Nexus has been run through the benchmark gauntlet and AnandTech compiled the results to find it bested all comers in the web browsing department.

The Google phone was put through a pair of browsing benchmarks--Sunspider Javascript Benchmark 0.9.1 and Rightware Browsermark--and it came out with the top results in both cases, ahead of the … Read more

Article updated: 12/7/11 to answer more questions.Yesterday, CNET's reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich (or "ICS"), the brand-spankin'-new operating system it's running on, burst forth. Moments later, the questions flooded in. Justifiably, there's a lot you want to know.

Here, I'll answer some of the most frequently asked questions I've received over Twitter, Google+, and e-mail, first for the Galaxy Nexus, and then for Ice Cream Sandwich (so keep scrolling!). I'll continue to update the list as more questions come in. If I didn'… Read more