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Look, feel, USABILITY
For starters, Ice Cream Sandwich just looks really different than previous versions of the OS. While Gingerbread attempted a stark, neon green on black, striving-for-futurism dance (with lots of mixed messages on styling and tone), ICS is much more unified. The general motif of the user interface centers on use and reuse of blue and gray dotted with bursts of color, mixed in with flattened navigation, and multi-leveled, multidimensional panels and icons. Dimensionality seems to be a theme in ICS, and you can see it even in the redesigned applications icons, which now seem to suggest physical depth as well as multiple strata of use. There is some of the "Tron" feel from Honeycomb here, but it's been scaled back and humanized in a way that makes the OS feel a lot more approachable.
Nearly every piece of the operating system, from the homescreen to the core apps, menus, widgets, and even pop-ups has been redesigned. That goes for the font in the OS, which is a custom, in-house typeset called Roboto — a subject of some controversy. I happen to think the new typeface is a welcome, clean addition to Android, and a big improvement over the previous Droid Sans face.
Starting at the lock screen, things are really different. The standard unlock sequence is now a swipe of a lock icon left or right — the latter to get into the phone, and the former to jump right into the camera. I love the convenience of this, but unfortunately you can't use the camera jump if you pin or password protect the device (that goes for Face Unlock and pattern locks as well).
Notifications have been cleaned up and tweaked too. Not only can you access your notifications from the lock screen (provided you're not password protected), but you can individually swipe messages or alerts away. There's also a persistent quick jump to settings in the notification window (which has been restyled and made subtly transparent).
When you hit the homescreen, you'll see a fairly familiar setup of five main screens, but with persistent navigation elements along the bottom. A row of the on-screen buttons, and then a customizable lineup of your favorite apps or folders, plus a center button which brings you to your app and widget drawer. Google search is now a persistent box at the top of all your homescreens (it's very similar to webOS' "Just Type").
You can now make folders of apps by simply dragging one icon onto another, and the folder will auto-arrange itself when you move the icons around. It's very reminiscent of iOS.
Opening the app drawer brings you a grid of your applications, and you can tab into your widget selections as well. There's also a persistent link to the Android Market in the corner. It's similar to the way Honeycomb handles these pages, but it all feels much more natural here.
Menus and lists have been changed as well, and particularly in settings, it's easier to find the toggles you're looking for without hunting and pecking.
One big new feature that Google has added to the settings menu is the ability to set data warnings, hard limits, see application data activity, and limit background data on an app-by-app basis. That's a welcome relief for people looking to contain their bills, especially if you've got a hard stop on something expensive, like Verizon's LTE service. The look and feel of these screens is refreshingly stark with just the right amount of futurism (a theme here).
I want to note that moving around all of these screens is buttery smooth. There's no lag, no stutter. Animations are fluid, and everything feels cohesive and solid. It's like Ice Cream Sandwich is more "there" than previous versions of Android. Additionally, there are repeated motifs that really work, such as the concept of swiping left of right through panels of an app to get at different pieces or layers of content. That's used throughout the OS now, and it makes a lot of sense.
Another thing that's been done is that navigational items previously buried in menus have been pulled out and placed into touch-friendly, exposed rows. There are still some options hidden in a small "overflow" tab (a consistent triple-dotted nav item), but these are generally the less frequently visited areas of an app, such as settings. I find that the new system makes it even easier to get around in the OS, and compared to its nearest competition (iOS), it is actually far simpler in some instances. Take, for example, clearing your cache in the browser. In iOS, you actually have to exit the app, open settings, find Safari settings, and then do your cache clearing. In ICS you simply tap on the overflow box, click settings, and clear away — without ever leaving your app. It's a great blend of the desktop and mobile user interactions, and one of the things I liked best about what Google did with Honeycomb.
One last big piece worth mentioning is the vast alteration to multitasking on the phone. Previously, multitasking was done by holding down the home button and waiting for a pop-over of your last few apps to appear. The trigger to get into that screen was blind, and the apps your were heading towards were blind as well. Google has rectified that situation in ICS by providing a dedicated multitask button in your persistent virtual button list, and by not only showing what app you've been using, but a small snapshot of the last screen you were in. You can also triage this list by swiping away the apps you're not using. It's kind of like webOS cards running vertically instead of horizontally — and it really, truly works well. It does take a moment to get used to, but after a few minutes with it, I was wondering how I'd been living with multitasking in Android (and other platforms like iOS) that was so clunky.
The core of the redesign here is about exposing options, reducing steps and confusion, and making Android generally more delightful to use. I would say Google has accomplished what it set out to do. That's not to say that there aren't still some imperfections here, but generally Ice Cream Sandwich feels like a modern — and most importantly, elegant — operating system that's been thoughtfully designed.
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