Google announced a new sweet-toothed project for its Android OS platform at its 2011 Google I/O conference in San Francisco this week. The “Ice Cream Sandwich” AKA Android 3.1 will be the latest update to the most recent 2.3 Gingerbread on smartphones.
The actual OS will not be unveiled until the four quarter of 2011, although Google gave a sneak peak of the features to come. Many of these improvements will attempt to clone those of the tablet OS Honeycomb 3.0, including further multitasking capabilities, camera focusing and face tracking improvements, and even the ability to connect Android phones other devices via micro-USB.
Google says the reason for cloning these features is to make Ice Cream Sandwich an OS capable of being used on all Android devices, whether its your HTC 4.3″ Thunderbolt smartphone or your 10.1″ Samsung Galaxy Tab.
This disconnect in user experience is definitely something many have been thinking about when choosing whether or not to purchase a tablet, smartphone or vice versa. In other words, this update could be the most significant improvement to Android yet, changing once again how we interact between our devices, new and old.
And with Google’s Chrome OS just coming out of the wood work on notebooks with Samsung and Acer, universality is definitely a direction we think Google should be and is heading.
Via: Wired
