ICS Rom - Ok, so this is not an app but an OS. However, trying out the highly anticipated Ice Cream Sandwich release on my Samsung Vibrant is pretty exciting. I thought my flashing rom days were behind me and that I had become a mature Android user. One that would theme and customize a stable CM7 release so that I didn't have to be sure my Titanium Backup was up to date daily. Wrong! There are currently 3 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) releases in the Vibrant XDA developers forums right now. I first tried the i9000 port version. I loved it was ASOP Android but it was still too buggy to run all of the time. I have now tried Neobuddy89's Passion v3 Beta. It is much more stable and still has most of the stock features of ICS as part of the rom. He has added some extra apps in that I would prefer not to have but the overall rom seems much like the i9000 port. There were some live wallpapers removed too but I pulled one back in from the ported version.
ICS is amazing. I really like the smoothness of it. Obviously, there has been a ton of effort put into this from Google to make it much more fluid and appealing. The new Roboto font is a big improvement. The words are very clear and readable. It is also a thinner font that allows for more text in small areas. The Settings area has been updated in a nice way. At the top you have the wifi and Bluetooth toggles and settings right where you would like them to be. The new data usage chart is accessible right under them. Below that is the standard Android Sound, Display, storage... settings that were in previous versions of Android.
The launcher lets you put apps on the bar beside the app launcher icon. Above that you have a line and the desktop. The desktop allows you to place icons on it like before but new to ICS is a grid showing you where it will be placed. If you are in the apps list press and hold the app to drag it to the desired location on the desktop. The desktop then snaps back out to full screen so you can see your icons. This is all very smooth. There is a Google search bar at the top of every screen on the desktop. I thought I would find this annoying and a waste of screen, but instead I hardly notice it. The transitions of the apps in the list are like trays getting shuffled. It is a nice touch Google. Also, the soft buttons that the new devices without hardware buttons will get are not shown with a device that has buttons. I like that they didn't double it up on old devices.
The new people Center app has all of your contacts in it. There are three areas at the top that allow you to see those contacts, groups and favorites. There is also a search option. I have been on custom roms so I don't see a big improvement there but it is a nice centralized app to find your contacts.
For me, the biggest improvement may be the notification bar. I laugh when IOS users show me their "new" notification bar in IOS5 like it is a revolutionary feature that Apple created. It is so Android last year! The new notification bar in ICS pulls down and has an icon for Settings right there. It is so much more convenient. Below that are your system notifications. You want to clear just one of them? No problem, just swipe it off to the right and it is gone.Of course you can still click it to open the app or message.
I like that you can browse widgets now too. Though I keep forgetting where that feature is. It is a second tab in the apps list. I know it makes sense but I keep looking for it in Settings>Apps. Small gripe but the feature is helpful. You can see the widget before placing it on the desktop.
Google+ is built right in. All of the apps are starting to look like Google+ and that unified platform. Gmail, Maps, Calendar and the other Google apps now have that same look and feel. No longer do they all look like they were designed by different companies. Finally!
So far I am very impressed with Ice Cream Sandwich. What an improvement over Gingerbread and even Honeycomb. I feel proud to show off the stock OS now to IOS users. Before it just looked rough and like engineers designed it. Now it looks like someone with a keen eye for design laid it out. But the design didn't come at the cost of added lag. Oh no. They sped it up and made it look nice. It is functional and even on my "old" single core 1GHz CPU Vibrant that Samsung has since forgotten, is very fast and responsive. I was about to go pre-order the Galaxy Nexus but now I am having second thoughts. Rather than breaking my contract and having ETF's I may stick with this until my contract is up.
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