Android v4 ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich)

I recently received a prompt on my Nexus-S that a new OS update was available for it and decided to update the OS since my Samsung Nexus-S is unrooted and unmodded so I wasn't really worried about having to re-root or re-mod the Nexus-S (and any problems that might arise with rooting and modding with the new OS).

When I wrote my blog entry regarding my Samsung Nexus-S (*HERE*), it was at v2.3.6 (Gingerbread) so going up to v4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) using the OTA (over the air) update was skipping v3.x (Honeycomb).

I've used Honeycomb (AndroidOS v3.x) on my Android tablet so when I updated my Nexus-S to Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), I wasn't sure what to expect.

The upgrade on my Nexus-S took under 10 minutes using the 3G from my provider and I don't remember how many times my phone rebooted as part of the installation but I would say that it didn't reboot more than twice.

After the reboot, there were some updates from the Google Play Store that I had to do (Gmail, Google+, etc.) and this also didn't take a long time.

The interface for ICS is somewhat similar to the iPhone interface in the fact that instead of scrolling through applications by moving your finger vertically over the screen, you now have to move your finger horizontally over the screen. There is also a quick launch application bar on the bottom of the screen similar to what has been available on the iPhone. This quick launch application bar can be customized. To customize it, you basically drag the icon off the quick launch bar and replace it with the program icon that you want. I find the animation when scrolling across the application list "pages" is nice.

I do find that ICS makes my Nexus-S a bit less responsive (less "quick") than when my Nexus-S was running Gingerbread but all in all, I'm satisfied/happy with the update. ICS does take a bit of time to get used to since after about 2 days, I still sometimes find myself trying to scroll through the application screen by scrolling vertically but I would say that there is no real learning curve when going from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich or even when going from Honeycomb to Ice Cream Sandwich.

In terms of whether you should update your device (ex: Nexus-S) from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich, I would recommend doing so since a lot of programs will probably work only with later versions of Android. When Ice Cream Sandwich officially becomes available for my Android tablet (currently running Honeycomb), I will have no hesitation about upgrade my tablet as well to ICS.

I'm not sure if this is an added result of upgrading my Nexus-S to ICS but for callers who aren't part of my contacts, my call log will give an approximate geographical location based on the area code. For area code 514 (which represents the island of Montreal), it will show up as a "Quebec" area code (which I'm assuming is the province of Quebec and not the city of Quebec).

If you have any questions/comments regarding this blog entry, please don't hesitate to leave a comment in the comments section. Please note that comments are moderated and any comments that contain a URL link or hyperlink will automatically be flagged as being spam and will not be posted.