Galaxy Nexus And Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) Announced

Google’s long-awaited new flagship device, the Galaxy Nexus was officially announced last night. It’s a powerhouse of a phone, sporting a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, a 720p HD Super AMOLED display, and a camera that can record video in 1080p, just for starters. There are LTE and HSPA+ versions of the device, which means we may see it on more than one U.S. carrier. The Galaxy Nexus lacks any buttons on the front, instead using the bottom of its massive 4.65” display to hold virtual buttons that can disappear when the device is playing full screen video. But as great as this device looks, the specs aren’t news. Rumors have been floating around for weeks that nailed them.

No, the big news tonight is all about software. The Galaxy Nexus is the first device running Android 4.0 a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich, and Google has delivered the biggest revamp of its mobile OS yet. The list of features revealed at tonight’s event was impressive, confirming several rumors and bringing a few nice surprises.

Ice Cream Sandwich brings many of the features of the tablet-based Honeycomb OS to cellphones. We get scrollable, resizeable widgets. Widgets are now added from a menu that displays the actual widgets, instead of just their names. And the Honeycomb unlock screen is now part of the phone OS, with an option to unlock right into the camera app. The unlock screen also has a new twist for securing your device. Instead of a pattern or password unlock, the Galaxy Nexus can use its front-facing camera for facial recognition, so only you can unlock your phone. The idea does make me a bit nervous, though, since the phone failed to unlock during the live event. I hope there’s a decent backup system in place.

The camera and gallery apps have gotten a major overhaul. First of all it’s gotten much faster. Android phones aren’t exactly known for quick shutter speeds, and the delays between shots are almost unbearable. But Ice Cream Sandwich brings an end to that issue. Samsung and Google are saying the Galaxy Nexus has zero shutter lag, and they demonstrated the phone’s ability to take several shots in rapid succession. You can also take panoramic photos, time-lapse videos, and edit photos right in the native gallery app.

Multitasking has taken a page from Honeycomb and added another from webOS. One of those on-screen virtual buttons brings up a list of all your running applications that looks nearly identical to the one currently on Android tablets, but now in addition to scrolling through the list, you can close apps by swiping them off to the side. Tabs in the newest version of the Android web browser work the same way.

*Insert Star Trek reference here*

 

NFC is getting an upgrade right out of the TouchPad as well. Android Beam lets two NFC-enabled Android devices share almost any info with just a touch and a screen tap. Contacts, photos, maps, you can even send someone to the Market page for whatever app you’re using. It’s good to see webOS continue to contribute great ideas to its competitors.

And that’s not the only place Google found inspiration. Android fanboys like myself took great joy just last week in pointing out that iOS 5 stole the Android notification system. Now it’s the Apple fanboys’ turn to laugh, as Android users learn to create folders by dropping icons on top of one another. This was one of the iOS features I was most jealous of, so I’m happy to see it.

There’s no direct Siri competitor here, but Google’s made a major improvement in their voice keyboard. Instead of saying a sentence and then waiting for it to be processed, you can now dictate to your phone and see the results as you go. This is going to make the entire voice input system a lot more useable.

Google even took a page from the modders this time, adding music controls to the notification shade and the ability to clear notifications individually with a swipe. Both features are available in the popular Cyanogen Mod custom ROM.

That’s just the surface of what Google let us see tonight. There was plenty more, and I’m sure there will be some great features we don’t see until we get the Galaxy Nexus is in hand this November. Of course, we have yet to hear any of the phone’s down sides (I’m particularly nervous that not one word was said about battery life). Now’s when my patience starts to wear thin, because I think I’ve already seen my next phone.