Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich"

The new version of Android, 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich," combines elements from Google's phone and tablet versions with brand-new features and UI ideas. Let's take a look.

ICS has five scrolling home screens, but the applications at the bottom stay put. Now, they're customizable so you can pick your four favorite apps to always have available.

You can create folders of apps by stacking icons, just like on the iPhone.

ICS uses the multitasking display from Google's Honeycomb tablets, a vertical array of thumbnails of the most recent apps you've used.

The Ice Cream Sandwich app tray looks similar to previous Android versions, with the addition of the "Widgets" tab.

The Widgets tab, like the one in Honeycomb, lets you add large or complex live widgets to your home screens.

One terrific new feature in Ice Cream Sandwich lets you see how much cellular data you've used, and which apps have been using it.

The browser has gotten a refit for Ice Cream Sandwich. You can save pages for offline viewing, and the browser opens up to this attractive list of graphical bookmarks.

New browser options include an easy way to get rid of those hideous "mobile sites." The menu button on previous Android phones has been replaced by a virtual menu button, three vertical dots.

Ice Cream Sandwich merges Google and Twitter contacts, showing Twitter updates in the contact book, but it doesn't support Facebook.

Something about these contact cards—the bleed on the upper half—reminds me a little of Windows Phone 7.

You can block callers by tagging them as "send all calls to voicemail" on their contact cards.

Gmail is still at the core of the Android experience; here's ICS's Gmail client.

Emails look great; they support HTML and inline images.

New icons in the Android Market give app buyers guidance by telling them which apps are prominent and popular.

There are plenty of changes in the Music app, including a full graphic equalizer and these cool litle VU meters when you're playing a song.

The Ice Cream Sandwich gallery app goes for a very tight tiled look.

Ice Cream Sandwich has very flexible and powerful voice input, but it has some trouble with names.