Google’s latest update to its world-famous Android mobile operating system includes strengthening the operating system itself and redesigning the elements in its user interface. If you loved the easy and user-friendly interface of either Android 2.3 Gingerbread or Android 3.0 Honeycomb, you would also love the new improvements in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which supposedly brings together the best elements of Gingerbread and Honeycomb. Here are the three top design improvements Google implemented in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Typography That’s Easy on the Eyes
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will enchant users with a completely redone and made-over Android, starting with its typeface, Roboto, used all over the various screens and widgets. Roboto is a sans-serif typeface introduced in the latest Android 4.0 operating system. Google described it as a “modern, yet approachable” font.
Despite being criticized for imitating more popular and well-established typefaces such as Helvetica, Univers, or Myriad, the new typeface in ICS makes reading text easy on an Android smartphone. The very typeface appears in Ice Cream Sandwich’s magazine-type design, though big pictures, bold headlines, and many resting spaces for the eyes (called “white space” in publication parlance).
For instance, the Lock Screen in Android 4.0 reeks of Roboto all around. The digital clo, the day, date, and charge information are in Robot, and on. Roboto is splattered all over the Ice Cream Sandwich. Apart from Roboto on the Lock Screen, Google has also updated the live wallpaper on the screen, which now shows rich but subtle animations of blue orbs rising skywards.
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New Home Screen
In any Android smartphone or tablet, the Home screen is where everything begins. Unlocking the phone brings you to the Home screen, which has an analog clock in the middle and some virtual buttons below. Ice Cream Sandwich offers a new, innovative way to interact with the device.
Virtual buttons have been integrated into the system, and they hide when they know they are not needed. Thus, you get a bigger viewing area with those buttons out of the way as you browse the Web with your Android phone or while watching movies or videos.
The Home screen is not the only place to run your applications. It is also a place for your widgets, giving you access to important information without the need to go anywhere. Widgets in ICS, just like in Honeycomb, are resizable. You can make them as big as you want or as small as you want. They are your widgets, and Android 4.0 allows you to have your way with them.
Adding widgets in ICS is also faster and easier. With the widget tab, you can easily locate your widgets or pick and drag those you want to drop on your Home screen. With better widgets, ICS gives you fresh air when adding your personal touch and customizing your Android phone and its Home screen.
Folders and Favorites TrayFolders ares containers, just like real-life folders, that allow you to group and organize printed documents. In Android 4.0, you can group your favorite apps, contacts, and more into folders. All it takes is dragging and dropping icons from one folder to another—easy, breezy organization and management folders.
Also, with Android 4.0, you can customize your Favorites Tray at the bottom of the screen. So, if you have placed your favorite apps inside one folder and want them to be instantly accessible regardless of which screen you’re viewing, put them in the Favorites Tray.
These three design features are not just eye-candy. Instead, theyy are meant to be functional improvements whose chief goal is to make Android 4.0 easier and more pleasurable. With these improvements in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, users of Android smartphones and Android tablets will get the best of both Gingerbread and Honeycomb.
