still1 Posted September 28, 2011 Share Posted September 28, 2011 I cant wait for Ice Cream Sandwich... here are some of the features if you are interested. With Ice Cream Sandwich on the horizon, we at AP thought it would be a good idea to give you a roundup of what Google's been cooking up in Building 44. We actually know a good deal about the future of Android; I'm talking real, solid facts. These are features Android engineers have demoed or talked about, and acquisitions Google has made related to Android technology. We even have pretty clear timelines for most of them. A quick note before we get started: most of these videos are like, an hour long -- you're only expected to watch about 30 seconds of them, so pause whenever it gets boring. Anyway, let's get started! Device to Device NFC Sharing Source: Due Date: Ice Cream Sandwich Near Field Communication (NFC) allows devices to wirelessly transfer small amounts of data over a short range. Just tap one NFC-equipped device against another and the bits start flying. If you've been following Android news (and I know you do) you probably first heard about NFC from Google Wallet. Wallet's goal is to replace the credit card swipe with a phone tap. Saving you the "hassle" of digging out your card when it's time to pay. Well at Google I/O 2011, Google revealed that they've been cooking up other uses for that neglected NFC chip: sharing! Google plans on letting you transfer just about anything from one Android device to another with a tap. Just a tap. The phrase they kept using was "0-click sharing." There is no preparation, no app to open, just tap 2 devices together and it works. They demoed transferring contacts, web pages, apps, and coolest of all, YouTube. It's very slick. If you're in the middle of a video, you can tap to transfer the link and even the current time. If you have an app open, the other phone loads that app's Market page. But that's just the beginning. To quote the Android engineer giving the talk, "We want to build this into as many system apps as we can." Android developers have access to it too, so expect NFC sharing of pictures, music, files, calendar events -- you name it. We were given a concrete release date at Google I/O 2011. I linked directly to the cool part of the video, but , the Android Engineer giving the talk says, "Here's some ideas we're going to put in the Ice Cream Sandwich Release." You can't get more concrete than that.Keep in mind this requires your phone to have the requisite NFC hardware, it's not just software. Right now that means you need a Nexus S or certain Galaxy S II variants, so most ICS upgraders will be out of luck. However, by the time Ice Cream Sandwich rolls around, NFC should be standard equipment on new phones. Better Text to Speech Source: Google's Acquisition of Phonetic Arts Due Date: Unknown Text to speech is the "voice" of your phone. When you're using navigation, and the phone tells you to "Turn right onto Main Street," that speech is generated by Android's text to speech (TTS) engine. Text to Speech launched with Android 2.0 and hasn't seen a single update since. The current engine is called "Pico TTS" and it is, in a word, terrible. To be honest though, it's supposedto be terrible. It's right there in the name. "Pico" is derived from the Italian "piccolo," meaning "small". It was never meant to be good. The primary concern was making it fit into the Droid 1's 512MB ROM. Today, however, phones regularly ship with 16GB of internal storage (partitioned, of course), and that means more room for fancy things like a great sounding text to speech engine. So Google, after realizing the current TTS sounded like GLaDOS's boring little sister, decided to upgrade. In December 2010, they whipped out their wallet and bought speech synthesis company Phonetic Arts. All That Honeycomb Goodness On Phones Hardware Accelerated UI Ground-up Multicore Support The Tron Theme Virtual Buttons Resizable and Scrollable Widgets New Keyboard Notification Controls A Tabbed Browser Chrome Bookmark Sync HD Youtube Redesigned Camera, Calendar, Contacts, Gmail, Gallery and Email Apps Encrypted Storage USB Host and Bluetooth Support for Mass Storage Devices, Keyboards, Mice, Gamepads, Joysticks, and Cameras Wi-Fi Proxy Settings Auto Account Login Media Scanner is Out, Media Sync is In And a lot more... read more http://www.androidpo...ich-and-beyond/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoyBoppins Posted September 28, 2011 Share Posted September 28, 2011 Hardware accelerated UI is what is need most. NFC sharing seems cool, but it makes it sound really simple to share the exact thing you want, but Im a bit skeptical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Topham Hatt Posted September 28, 2011 Share Posted September 28, 2011 Are they going to let you move apps like Maps, Facebook and YouTube to the SD card? Things that people actually WANT to do? :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
htcz Posted September 28, 2011 Share Posted September 28, 2011 God my .... just got hard. More so that it is again open source and Ill get it on my phone :) Are they going to let you move apps like Maps, Facebook and YouTube to the SD card? Things that people actually WANT to do? :p The article says nowadays most phones come with large internal storage (which is true) so why? To this day, on CM, I havent had to move ONE app to my SD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techbeck Posted September 28, 2011 Share Posted September 28, 2011 Are they going to let you move apps like Maps, Facebook and YouTube to the SD card? Things that people actually WANT to do? :p I have like 100+ plus apps. May not be as many as some, but they all fit no problem. When Android was first introduced, there was issues with storing apps on the phone and having enough space. Now its not so much a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Topham Hatt Posted September 28, 2011 Share Posted September 28, 2011 The article says nowadays most phones come with large internal storage (which is true) so why? True, true. I was just being sad I have a great phone, but crappy internal storage :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreenMartian Posted September 28, 2011 Share Posted September 28, 2011 The Tron Theme (Y) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teebor Posted September 28, 2011 Share Posted September 28, 2011 Which Tron though, new or old? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjoswald Posted September 29, 2011 Share Posted September 29, 2011 Sounds great! Can't wait for the Cyanogen team to get their hands on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hollow.Droid Posted September 29, 2011 Share Posted September 29, 2011 I look forward to Samsungs new touchwiz built on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger H. Veteran Posted September 29, 2011 Veteran Share Posted September 29, 2011 I look forward to Samsungs new touchwiz built on this. :x - coming from someone with a brand new Samsung Galaxy S2. TouchWiz isn't bad but i'd take stock over that anyday of the week! :yes: Guess we all have our likes and dislikes as expected however :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LittleNeutrino Veteran Posted September 29, 2011 Veteran Share Posted September 29, 2011 Here is hoping we will end up with a Cyanogenmod based on this within the next year or so :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoochieMamma Posted September 29, 2011 Share Posted September 29, 2011 WiFi Proxy Settings, THANK GOD! Hopefully by individual networks too. farmeunit 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
still1 Posted September 29, 2011 Author Share Posted September 29, 2011 Would be cool to see Cyanogen porting ICS to touchpad!! Ice Cream Sandwich is the real deal in all of Android version... all the other versions are just not properly organised. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hollow.Droid Posted October 1, 2011 Share Posted October 1, 2011 :x - coming from someone with a brand new Samsung Galaxy S2. TouchWiz isn't bad but i'd take stock over that anyday of the week! :yes: Guess we all have our likes and dislikes as expected however :D Exact same phone here and I'm a big fan of the TW improvements. I've come from a Nexus one and tried every AOSP/Sense/MIUI rom going and TW still seems nicer. Could be because of the S2s blistering speed though :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guru Posted October 2, 2011 Share Posted October 2, 2011 Sandwich is going be nice with this :) http://www.slashgear.com/google-nexus-prime-renderings-appear-accurate-30184469/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digitalx Posted October 2, 2011 Share Posted October 2, 2011 Sandwich is going be nice with this :) http://www.slashgear...urate-30184469/ why do renders all make the screen too close to the edge... it's never like that on real devices and won't be like that on the next nexus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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