Google Android OS 4.0 Review: Find Out What's New and Different Discussion

[Dragan Petric]

The latest version of Google's mobile operating system is Android OS 4.0 (aka "Ice Cream Sandwich"). This debuted recently on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, but will eventually be running on a wide array of smartphones.

After developing separate operating system editions for smartphones and tablets, Google has finally introduced a unified version of Android which will be used on both types of devices. In practice, the users may have not felt the differences between Gingerbread (Android OS 2.3 intended for smartphones) and Honeycomb (Android OS 3.x intended for tablets), but third-party app developers sure have. Android OS 4.0 brings a unified user interface, as well as unified API for developers.

The changes even go beyond combining the best of both worlds (Honeycomb and Gingerbread). Some improvements are features previously seen in the alternate user interfaces created by device manufacturers, like HTC's Sense UI, Samsung's TouchWiz or Sony Ericsson's Timescape. In addition, some of the bundled apps offer improved functionality and an increase in their available number of options.

Read the full content of this Article: Google Android OS 4.0 Review: Find Out What's New and Different

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[xconan]

The folder stacking funciton wasn't an Apple innovation. Apple copied it from Bumptop, a company that Google purchased. Google should be able to sue Apple for stealing or infringing on their IP.

[Varjak]

xconan, I hope you're right. Maybe then they could 'trade' the folder functionality for the 'tap the phone#/email address' functionality.

[HellcatM]

apple stole the notification pull down menu from Android and initial multi-tasking was also "borrowed" from Android To me it seems apple "borrowed" as much from Google as Google has from apple.

[rkevwill]

Oh, and nobody borrowed it from blackberry? BTW, in android, when a running app is running, it runs in the background. In IOS, its paused, and uses virtually no memory. Big difference in multi-tasking. RIM (remember them?) has had true multitasking wayyyyy before Android or iOS.

[SGosnell]

Well, RIM and its OS was around way before Android and iOS. But Android is just tweaked Linux, and has had multitasking since long, long before the Blackberry was even a gleam in RIM's eye. As has Apple and its desktop OS.

There are only so many ways to get a specific thing done, and the most efficient way is often used by multiple people or companies.

Apps are truly completely paused in iOS? That was one of the main weaknesses of PalmOS, which couldn't truly multitask, and that helped kill it more than most other shortcomings, IMO. Memory is cheap, and I want apps to continue to run in the background unless I close them.

[rkevwill]

Comparing iOS to the old PalmOS is pretty silly. iOS apps are truly running, just not active when you leave the app for another. Switching back to the desired app from the dock (as I call it) brings it immediately back up to your previous place. What you are describing reminds me of my old ipaq, where I had to close apps when they started slowing it down. My son is constantly checking to see what apps he has open on his Android, cause he is an app hog, and hardly never closes them, then can't understand why it slows down.

I have to call you to task, to compare Linux to blackberry, apple, or android. There were no widely distributed phones running Linux with multi tasking, prior to Blackbery, or Android, or even iOS. There were many desktop systems with multi tasking, like linux, Apple, Windows, etc etc. Lets compare oranges to oranges here.

[SGosnell]

Palm apps went back to the previous place they were in. I admit to not knowing how iOS does it, thus the question.

Of course there were no phones running Linux until Google tweaked it to run on phones and called it Android. Android uses a standard Linux kernel, with some libraries to control a touch screen and other phone-like stuff. Whether the OS lets apps run in the background or pauses them is a development decision, and Apple not letting the user decide whether to have them running is rather typical. The Linux community has always been far to the other side, and trusts the users to make their own decisions. If I run out of memory, that's my fault, and it's up to me to make the appropriate adjustments. I do not want some programmer at the OS level making those decisions for me. If I did, I would use Apple or Microsoft products.

[Drillbit]

Linux existed on mobile years before Android did. There are different variants of it, among the most popular then was the LiMo variant.

Who used mobile Linux? Literally phones you would think that are featurephones --- they include Motorola RAZR 2, and the ROKR series. One of the most successful was a China only smartphone that included a touchcreen, called the MotoMing.

Motorola MING - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also various Japanese keitai runs a Linux based mobile OS, particularly with Docomo, called FOMA-L.

Mobile Linux also extends to Maemo and WebOS. Bada OS also runs on either a foundation of Linux or BSD Unix.

[Drillbit]

iOS is based from MacOS which in turn is based from NeXTOS, which in turn is based from BSD Unix. Basically iOS is indeed a 100% POSIX (meaning certified Unix) machine. This is the same operating system that runs servers with thousands of terminals and tasks.

In its heart, iOS is really a multitasking OS because it is Unix. Apple did quite a job to stop it from multitasking. Actually what happens is the illusion that it isn't multitasking, because the OS is and always will have system processes that are multitasking.

What they did was to take the user privileges, and set it up so that only one user owned process has the permission to run, while all other user processes are paused in the background. You, the Apple iPHone user, never truly controls your device. You are just a user in a Unix machine set up as such. You don't have root or administrator privileges, which is what you truly need to be to fully control a Unix machine.

Thus iOS is a Unix OS with a clever facade. The term "jailbreaking" is the same concept as the Android "rooting", which is essentially, breaking the user cage to gain access to root administration.

Linux is pretty much an open source variant of Unix, and works with the same principle. Again, Android is "packaged" Linux. The Android "user" is set with "user" privileges, with an elaborate user interface facade to hide the Linux/Unix underneath. Hence the concept of "rooting" the phone to gain true administrator privileges. which to gain true access to the operating system. With a proper text terminal, these operating systems can even respond to line commands.

Like iOS, what you see apps running in Android is a kind of sandbox where the multitasking behavior of the apps are controlled by a set of permissions.