Introducing Android 4.0
Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is the latest version of the Android platform for
phones, tablets, and more. It builds on the things people love most about Android — easy
multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep
interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing.
Simple, Beautiful, Useful
Refined, evolved UI
Focused on bringing the power of Android to the surface, Android 4.0 makes common actions
more visible and lets you navigate with simple, intuitive gestures. Refined animations
and feedback throughout the system make interactions engaging and interesting. An
entirely new typeface optimized for high-resolution screens improves readability and
brings a polished, modern feel to the user interface.
Virtual buttons in the System Bar let you navigate instantly to Back, Home, and Recent
Apps. The System Bar and virtual buttons are present across all apps, but can be dimmed
by applications for full-screen viewing. You can access each application's contextual
options in the Action Bar, displayed at the top (and sometimes also at the bottom) of the
screen.
Multitasking is a key strength of Android and it's made even easier and more visual on
Android 4.0. The Recent Apps button lets you jump instantly from one task to another
using the list in the System Bar. The list pops up to show thumbnail images of apps used
recently — tapping a thumbnail switches to the app.
The Recent Apps list makes multitasking simple.
Jump to the camera or see notifications without unlocking.
For incoming calls, you can respond instantly by text.
Rich and interactive notifications let you keep in constant touch with incoming messages,
play music tracks, see real-time updates from apps, and much more. On smaller-screen
devices, notifications appear at the top of the screen, while on larger-screen devices
they appear in the System Bar.
Home screen folders and favorites tray
New home screen folders offer a new way for you to group your apps and shortcuts
logically, just by dragging one onto another. Also, in All Apps launcher, you can now
simply drag an app to get information about it or immediately uninstall it, or disable a
pre-installed app.
The All Apps launcher (left) and resizable widgets (right) give you apps and rich
content from the home screen.
On smaller-screen devices, the home screen now includes a customizable favorites tray
visible from all home screens. You can drag apps, shortcuts, folders, and other priority
items in or out of the favorites tray for instant access from any home screen.
Resizable widgets
Home screens in Android 4.0 are designed to be content-rich and customizable. You can do
much more than add shortcuts — you can embed live application content directly through
interactive widgets. Widgets let you 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 you can expand them to show more content or shrink them
to save space.
New lock screen actions
The lock screens now let you do more without unlocking. From the slide lock screen, you
can jump directly to the camera for a picture or pull down the notifications window to
check for messages. When listening to music, you can even manage music tracks and see
album art.
Quick responses for incoming calls
When an incoming call arrives, you can now quickly respond by text message, without
needing to pick up the call or unlock the device. On the incoming call screen, you simply
slide a control to see a list of text responses and then tap to send and end the call.
You can add your own responses and manage the list from the Settings app.
Swipe to dismiss notifications, tasks, and browser tabs
Android 4.0 makes managing notifications, recent apps, and browser tabs even easier. You
can now dismiss individual notifications, apps from the Recent Apps list, and browser
tabs with a simple swipe of a finger.
A spell-checker lets you find errors and fix them faster.
A powerful voice input engine lets you dictate continuously.
Improved text input and spell-checking
The soft keyboard in Android 4.0 makes text input even faster and more accurate. 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, you can choose from
multiple spelling suggestions, delete a word, or add it to the dictionary. You can even
tap to see replacement suggestions for words that are spelled correctly. For specialized
features or additional languages, you can now download and install third-party
dictionaries, spell-checkers, and other text services.
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.
Data usage controls let you monitor total usage by network type and application and
then set limits if needed.
Control over network data
Mobile devices can make extensive use of network data for streaming content,
synchronizing data, downloading apps, and more. To meet the needs of you with tiered or
metered data plans, Android 4.0 adds new controls for managing network data usage.
In the Settings app, colorful charts show the total data usage on each network type
(mobile or Wi-Fi), as well as amount of data used by each running application. Based on
your data plan, you can optionally set warning levels or hard limits on data usage or
disable mobile data altogether. You can also manage the background data used by
individual applications as needed.
Designed for accessibility
A variety of new features greatly enhance the accessibility of Android 4.0 for blind or
visually impaired users. Most important is a new explore-by-touch mode that lets you
navigate without having to see the screen. Touching the screen once triggers audible
feedback that identifies the UI component below; a second touch in the same component
activates it with a full touch event. The new mode is especially important to support
users on new devices that use virtual buttons in the System Bar, rather than dedicated
hardware buttons or trackballs. Also, standard apps are updated to offer an improved
accessibility experience. The Browser supports a script-based screen reader for reading
favorite web content and navigating sites. For improved readability, you can also
increase the default font size used across the system.
The accessibility experience begins at first setup — a simple touch gesture during setup
(clockwise square from upper left) activates all accessibility features and loads a setup
tutorial. Once accessibility features are active, everything visible on the screen can be
spoken aloud by the standard screen reader.
Sedangkan untuk internet, Note dilengkapi dengan GPPR, EDGE, HSDPA, HSUPA, dan WiFi. Walau kecepatan proses Note cepat, tapi akses internet bisa dibilang relatif. Karena akses internet tergantung provider yang digunakan.
