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Next from Google: Samsung Galaxy Nexus

While Google’s Android operating system dominates the smartphone operating system market, the tech company still makes a point to have their own “Google phones” released to serve as the inaugural carrier of their latest improvements to the popular OS. Far from the prepaid cell phone status of the seemingly ancient G1, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is including a sweetened version of Android, dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich. The new OS is allegedly leaps and bounds ahead of it’s most recent ancestor, Honeycomb 3.2, by combining its best attributes with those of Gingerbread. The improvements revealed by Google are nothing short of remarkable – on paper.

For one, the approach to Ice Cream Sandwich has been to make the smartphone experience more like the experience of a tablet computer. Icons are much more customizable, widgets can vary in size, images can be viewed in enlarged format (especially so on the Galaxy Nexus’s 4.65-inch screen), and buttons have been removed from the interface. In fact, Ice Cream Sandwich will be the first version of Android that can be used on both smartphones and tablet devices.

In addition, impressive leaps have been made in several key components of Android software. At the top of the list is facial recognition, which when used with the phone’s camera can act as a locking mechanism for your smartphone. Instead of backing up out of every window, or memorizing a sequence of button steps to exit successfully, the new Android will let you dispose of windows and apps with a flick of the finger. Voice-to-text will also be in real time, instead of delayed.

Another interesting change comes in the form of the camera application, which now comes with a feature that, if two people are using the camera for a video chat, the camera will focus on the person who is speaking. This comes along with other new camera features, such as panorama picture taking and multiple images taken at once. It’s obvious that Google took the large amount of criticism about their camera and camcorder apps to heart.

Ice Cream Sandwich is set to be released in mid-November. No word yet on when the Samsung Galaxy Nexus will be unveiled, or which carriers will have it.



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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2011 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Android. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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