Things you should know before upgrading from Gingerbread to IceCreamSandwich

It's JellyBean time. But the truth is that, still only 7% of the Android devices have IceCreamSandwich (aka ICS) or Android 4.0.3 installed. GingerBread (aka GB) is almost everywhere. Most of us in the world think that all new things are greater than the older things. Is that so? I doubt that. I think all you friends know what was happened with Windows Vista. That's a small reminder. 

Let's take this seriously and more technically. There are two proverbs in Sinhalese language.

1. Don't see crocodiles in your water basket. (Don't scare unnecessarily without knowing the danger)
2. Think before you jump. (Think before you do something new)

Both those proverbs converged in to the same fact that you need to investigate before you do something   new. Oh! I am not technical yet..

Let's see what are the top 5 features ICS offers to you.

1. Fine tuned User Interface

Resizable widgets

Home screens in Android 4.0 are designed to be content-rich and customizable. Users can do much more than add shortcuts — they can embed live application content directly through interactive widgets. Widgets let users check email, flip through a calendar, play music, check social streams, and more — right from the home screen, without having to launch apps. Widgets are resizable, so users can expand them to show more content or shrink them to save space.

New lock screen actions

The lock screens now let users do more without unlocking. From the slide lock screen, users can jump directly to the camera for a picture or pull down the notifications window to check for messages. When listening to music, users can even manage music tracks and see album art.

2. Rich and versatile camera capabilities

The Camera app includes many new features that let users capture special moments with great photos and videos. After capturing images, they can edit and share them easily with friends.

When taking pictures, continuous focus, zero shutter lag exposure, and decreased shot-to-shot speed help capture clear, precise images. 

Stabilized image zoom lets users compose photos and video in the way they want, including while video is recording. For new flexibility and convenience while shooting video, users can now take snapshots at full video resolution just by tapping the screen as video continues to record.

To make it easier to take great pictures of people, built-in face detection locates faces in the frame and automatically sets focus. For more control, users can tap to focus anywhere in the preview image.

3. Powerful voice input engine

Android 4.0 introduces a powerful new voice input engine that offers a continuous "open microphone" experience and streaming voice recognition. The new voice input engine lets you dictate the text you want, for as long as you want, using the language you want. You can speak continously for a prolonged time, even pausing for intervals if needed, and dictate punctuation to create correct sentences. As the voice input engine enters text, it underlines possible dictation errors in gray. After dictating, you can tap the underlined words to quickly replace them from a list of suggestions.

4. Face Unlock

Android 4.0 introduces a completely new approach to securing a device, making each person's device even more personal — Face Unlock is a new screen-lock option that lets users unlock their devices with their faces. It takes advantage of the device front-facing camera and state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to register a face during setup and then to recognize it again when unlocking the device. Users just hold their devices in front of their faces to unlock, or use a backup PIN or pattern.

Read more about pros and cons of this feature in this blog.
http://androidjellybeans.blogspot.com/2012/08/android-face-unlock-in-icecreamsandwich.html

5. Android Beam for share data with your neighbours

Android Beam is an innovative, convenient feature for sharing across two NFC-enabled devices, It lets people instantly exchange favorite apps, contacts, music, videos — almost anything. It’s incredibly simple and convenient to use — there’s no menu to open, application to launch, or pairing needed. Just touch one Android-powered phone to another, then tap to send.

OK.... This blog has taken some more length than i have expected .. Let's see the comparison in next post ... cheers !!!!!!!!