A Look at Ice Cream Sandwich for Tablets
By Harry McCracken | Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 9:43 am
I’m still hoping that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will help make Android tablets interesting to consumers in a way that Honeycomb-based Android tablets have not been. I haven’t tried one for myself yet. But JR Raphael of Computerworld has an Asus Transformer Prime with ICS–and he’s put together a nice walkthrough of the interface.
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January 25th, 2012 at 10:03 am
The problem with Android tablets is not the hardware or OS. It is the apps and the price. There are just far fewer apps for Android tablets than for the iPad and thus they do not give the consumer the same value. ICS makes it much easier to "port" phone apps to a tablet, so hopefully this situation will improve over time.
January 25th, 2012 at 1:09 pm
Ice Cream sandwich won't really do much to raise comsumer interest in Android tablet, because it doesn't really address any of the fundamental problems of Honeycomb. There are still very few native, tablet-optimized apps available, and compatibility with 2.x apps is still shoddy. There's still a giant black bar at the bottom of the screen. There are still various controls haphazardly placed at each corner of the screen. Google hasn't really "fixed" Honeycomb. They've just cleaned up the code a bit, and it runs a little faster now.
It's no coincidence that the tablets that do have consumer interest, i.e. the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, have thrown away the entire Android interface, and have focused on delivering something that people can understand.
However, I expect a lot of people will adopt "real" Android tablets this year, based solely on price. The iPad is firmly locked at $500, while 10" Android tablets start at $300. Price-sensitive consumers will like pick them up without fully understanding the drawbacks of Android on a tablet.
January 25th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Agreed. Price will decide. By sometime in '13, 'droid O/S tablets will be outselling Apple's.
January 26th, 2012 at 8:53 am
There's still too much of the 'Ooh isn't Tron cool' stuff going on ICS for my liking. Which hampers general appeal. To me it looks like something a 12 year old sci fi nerd thinks is good design rather than actually being good design.