At Google’s 2011 global developer conference, Google I/O at Moscone Center in San Francisco, Google has announced its next mobile OS release – Android Ice Cream Sandwich (no number version 2.4 included), and we got its logo. This new OS is going to launch in Q4 of this year, 2011. So, by the end of this year, Gingerbread won’t be the latest Android OS. Google will be adopting the Honeycomb holographic UI and multitasking UI to Ice Cream Sandwich. That’s why the Android 2.4 includes “Sandwich” piece in its name and it is also bringing richer widgets from Android Honeycomb, the tablet version. So that you can enjoy everything from the tablet experience on smaller devices as well. It will combine the tablet and smartphone operating systems into one joint OS that will support all devices. Google gave a new tag line to Android ICS: “One OS everywhere,” and promises state of the art UI, advanced app framework and redoubled commitment to open source.
At the event, Ice Cream Sandwich was called as Google’s "most ambitious release to date," and this new OS is build to run on any device, including phones, tablets, and laptops as a unified OS, available across all Google devices.
Totally, the key features of the Android Ice Cream Sandwich are that it will be available across all platforms that Google is on, a new Virtual Camera Operator and most of the features being noted as available for Android 3.1 Honeycomb now. Google has demoed a video of head tracking and OpenGL. Running on the GPU, the device’s camera can track your movements and orient the screen and applications to your point of view.
Google has unveiled the Android 3.1 Honeycomb for Verizon Xoom 3G and it is also coming to Google TV later.
[Source: Google]