What is the difference between gingerbread and ice cream sandwich os

When your phone rings, you can slide the screen lock upwards to access a series of pre-penned text replies. These are along the lines of 'I'll ring you later'.

Sadly, there's no option to send a message that simply says, 'Why won't you leave me alone, call me again and I'm contacting the police'. Unfortunately this new feature has come at the expense of the screen lock mute option, which we rather miss. Google giveth and Google taketh away. Android phones are data-hungry beasts. With many networks now stipulating data caps and fair usage policies, you have to be very careful about how much time you spend online.

Google is naturally aware of this and has imbued ICS with its own built-in traffic monitor. You can instruct it to simply warn you when you're about to approach your monthly data limit, or go one step further and instruct it to throttle your data connection when you creep over your allowance. Although you can download apps that perform a similar task, Android 2. App storage has always been a bone of contention with Android. Even when you've got a cavernous 32GB microSD card, you can't dump entire apps on it, regardless of the size of the microSD card present; a small portion of the data has to remain in the phone's app storage partition, and on some phones, that can be as little as a few hundred megabytes.

ICS solves this issue. With the Samsung Galaxy Nexus , the phone's 16GB storage is treated as a single partition, which means its shared between your media and app data. You can therefore fill your phone with as many apps as that limit will allow, without having to worry about any of that app-to-SD nonsense. Note this scenario may be different for ICS handsets that have a microSD card slot though, so don't get too excited. It has also led to problems with USB audio playback in cars.

Here's a fact that may shock you: stock Android 2. The OS itself is incapable of recording anything over a p resolution. Google is bringing stock Android bang up to date with ICS, which not only features crisp p-resolution video, but eye-popping p as well. With the Android Menu button now a dim and distant memory, thanks to ICS, Google has had to get creative to make up for its absence.

This is where the Action Bar comes in. In applications where options were concealed behind a Menu button press, you'll see a context-sensitive strip of commands appearing at the bottom of the display. ICS also more closely resembles the Honeycomb, compared to Gingerbread.

It also allows users to monitor the data usage of each application and limit or restrict the data used by the applications. This reduces significant costs in extra background data usage. The company has also incorporated soft keys and discarded the old capacitive keys required in Gingerbread. Ice Cream Sandwich offers new transitions without the need for a third party developer. ICS is also designed to react faster to touch and other features.

ICS also allows creating automatics folders on the screen by dragging an app on top of another app, while in Gingerbread the user would be required to manually create a folder and then add apps to it. Ice Cream Sandwich is everything already available in Gingerbread, but much faster and smoother. Key Difference: Gingerbread was released on December 6, and was an upgrade of the Android Froyo. Ice Cream Sandwich was publicly released on October 19, , with the source code for the OS becoming public on November 14, ICS was an upgrade to the leading Gingerbread and offered a variety of brand new features.

Image Courtesy: talkandroid. Comments simply understood. It allows users to compose messages by dictation. Users may dictate the message continuously and if any errors are available they will be highlighted in gray. The lock screen comes packed with improvements and innovation. On Android 4. It is possible to answer a call, see notifications and browse through music if the user is listening to music.

With Android 4. The new People application on Android 4. The camera capabilities are another area much enhanced in Android 4. Image capturing is enhanced with continuous focus, zero shutter lag exposure and decreased shot-to-shot speed. After capturing the images, users can edit those images on the phone itself, using the image editing software. While recording video users can take full HD images simply by tapping the screen, as well.

Another introducing feature on the camera application is the single-motion panorama mode for larger screens. Features such as face detection, tap to focus are also onboard Android 4. Live Effects enable changing the background to any available or custom images for captured video and video chat. There for it is no surprise that the new operating system has focused on the NFC capabilities of future Android smart phones and tablets.

However, the most important and noteworthy enhancement would be the upgrade the user interface has received to give it a much needed finishing touch. With fast passed release cycles, many previous Android versions seemed a little rough around the edges. Introducing Android 4. Courtesy: Android Developers. This version is optimized for smart phones, but few tablets are available in the market with Android 2. This major version is available in two sub versions with few upgrades between them.

Namely, they are Android 2. In comparison to previous versions, Android 2. The user interface of Android evolved with each new release. New color schemes and widgets have been introduced to make the interface more intuitive and easy to learn. However, many would agree that even at the release of Android 2.

The virtual keyboard has also been improved in comparison to the previous version. The keyboard can now handle faster input. With many users still migrating to the keyboard on the touch screen, the keys on Android 2. Additional to typing users can give input using voice commands, as well.

Word selection and copy paste is another improved function on Android 2. Users can select a word easily by press-hold and then copy to clipboard. The users can change the selection area by dragging the bounding arrows. Another notable improvement on Android 2. Those who have used Android 2. In Android 2. Unlike previous versions, Android 2. Despite the many comments on not needing to close applications on Android platform, Android 2. One important aspect in Android 2. Being true the objectives of the version, Android 2.

Voice over IP is also known as internet calls. Near field communication was also initially introduced to Android platform with Android 2. It allows reading information from NFC tags embedded in stickers, advertisements, etc.

With Android 2.