Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich: everything you need to know

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is now official.

Here’s what you need to know about the latest version of Google’s mobile OS which combines the best of the Android 2.x phone interface with the Android 3.x Honeycomb tablet interface.

Ice Cream Sandwich is designed for use with both phones and tablets.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich features

Android ICS offers a massive array of improvements over its predecessors bringing the best of both Gingerbread and Honeycomb while providing a raft of new innovations.

The company says 4.0 is a complete rethink of Android’s image and is part of a push to make the OS “Enchant me, Simplify My Life, and Make Me Awesome.”

“Android 4.0 builds on the things people love most about Android,” says Google in a post on the Android Developers Blog. “Easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing.”

Minor improvements include better copy and paste, data logging and warnings and, at last, the opportunity to easily grab screenshots by holding down the power and the volume buttons.

The keyboard and dictionaries have also been revamped, says Google. “Error correction and word suggestion are improved through a new set of default dictionaries and more accurate heuristics for handling cases such as double-typed characters, skipped letters, and omitted spaces. Word suggestion is also improved and the suggestion strip is simplified to show only three words at a time.”

“To fix misspelled words more easily, Android 4.0 adds a spell-checker that locates and underlines errors and suggests replacement words. With one tap, users can choose from multiple spelling suggestions, delete a word, or add it to the dictionary.”

The new OS is designed to bring common actions to the fore, with better animations and an entirely new typeface – more on that shortly.