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 ability to drag one app icon atop another to form an app folder; full 1080p video; and the Riptide GP game that exercises the quad-core ability of the chip.
"This is just a sneak peek of things to come for the first Tegra 3-powered Android tablet," Nvidia said in a statement.
Ice Cream Sandwich paves over a gap that Google created with the release of Android 3.x, aka Honeycomb. That was a stopgap product for tablets only, and its interfaces and abilities diverged from Gingerbread and other members of the Android 2.x family.
The next challenge for Google and its Android allies will be bringing Ice Cream Sandwich tablets to market--and making them compete against the dominant iPad.