Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich "Is The First Step In Rethinking Android"

Tweet

We have seen quite a bit in terms of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich since it was announced. But perhaps more important, many had been watching and waiting for ICS as it was going to be the first version of Android to help merge the tablets and smartphones into one operating system.

Of course, one could take that to mean that Ice Cream Sandwich was going to end up sticking around for some time. Or maybe more accurately, that Ice Cream Sandwich was going to be a new starting point for Google. Anyway, it look slike that will be just what is happening — both sticking around and a new starting point.

Google Product Management Director for Android, Hugo Barra was recently speaking at a press event and offered a few tidbits of information that suggest we will be seeing much more come as a result of the release of Ice Cream Sandwich. And taking a step back from that, it looks like Google was looking at what should go into ICS even before they finished Honeycomb.

“Even before we finished Honeycomb, which was designed specifically for tablets, we decided to take a step back and find out what users wanted from Android,”

From there, Barra went to to talk about how Google was looking towards Android users and non-users alike to try and judge what features were most important and what they thought should arrive with version 4.0.

“We gave both users and non-users a device, asked them what they expected, talked to a number of people around the world – basically finding out what they wanted [in our next OS].

“We learned a lot from these interactions and that was the data we used to rethink the face of Android. Ice Cream Sandwich is the first step in rethinking Android for the next two to three years, and it’s the biggest release we’ve done in terms of [new] code.”