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Android Developers Blog is getting Android devs and their apps ready for the soon-to-be-announced Ice Cream Sandwich SDK with some helpful tips. Even though the ICS SDK isn’t currently available for devs, the post lists various ways a developer can get their Honeycomb apps (currently only available on tablets) ready for smartphones and smaller screen devices that will be running Ice Cream Sandwich.
Ice Cream Sandwich is coming, and with it, handsets will be able to install apps built on Honeycomb. We haven’t released the ICS SDK just yet, but you can start preparing your Honeycomb apps by thinking about how they should work on smaller screens.
Stay tuned to the blog for more information about ICS as it nears release.
Should be any day now that Google will finally announce details on Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s so close, I can almost taste it. You guys excited?
[Via AndroidDevelopersBlog]
Please Google release the ICS phone homescreen already!!!
I’m desparate to know what it looks like
A phone with the holographic UI and the onscreen buttons…..exciting to say the least :D
I doubt there is much change in the way of looks. I think it’s mostly just to unify the platform. Big changes will come afterwards.
What is the source of this info? TIMN quoted one guy saying that and then another saying ICS was going to have some big changes. It really pisses me off that they did that. If they had multiple sources talk to all of them. Most people never even the update on their article and only saw the first dudes opinion.
Oh, I know a guy who knows a guy who blew a developer at Google. JK, I don’t have any sources, and I could very well be wrong. I’m just another speculator in an infinite sea of speculation, but it just seems obvious to me that there’s a lot of behind the scene changes to make everything flow between form factors and to be more competitive, but that’s about it.
It’s supposed to look a lot like Honeycomb
It’s supposed to because you heard a rumor, or it’s supposed to because you want it to?
it better be smooth and quick like wp7
nobody uses wp7, so how or why would we even compare to it?
Take a peek at the latest Android Market. Notice the tabs on the top row are similar to Honeycomb. I think ICS will look like this, minus the Windows Phone 7-esque “tiles”.
Reading this makes me tingle.
I’m kinda excited, guess i need to know a bit more about it before i get crazy! lol
It sure looks like Fragments + Action Bar will provide a powerful basis for single-sourced apps that work beautifully on handsets and tablets. Check out how perfectly the action bar adapts based on form factor:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OxiegwhkSI8/Tnd20i8UFgI/AAAAAAAAArc/ZKeG4WPeeMA/s1600/actionbar-phone-tablet.png
Impressive! This is so much more compelling than having to write completely separate apps for the two.
I love how its named…Fragments…lol I wonder if that was a dig at all the fragmentation talk from last year?
It was! It made everyone laugh at Google I/O when it was announced =p
Google should announce ICS the day before or the day the iPhone 5 gets announced.
I’m really hoping it will be as smooth as ios. And no Im not an iPhone guy it just seems that the ios is so smooth and android just has that little lag in it.
Galaxy S2 is already as smooth as iPhone 4, if not more responsive.
fragments will be great if you can get people to Dev it. I’m thinking about edify scripts…
notice the wireframe phone still has buttons?
Why does everyone ( ok not everyone but some people) seem to think ICS on phones means no psychical buttons? Has this ever been said and i just missed it? Because it makes no sense to me. I get it on the tablet to have software buttons, but on a smaller phone just seems like a waste to me. Anyways, so has this ever been said before, or is it just speculation because honeycomb has software buttons and ICS merges HC and GB thus ICS has to have them as well on the phones?
EDIT: and if the picture up there is any way representative of phones with ICS on it, they still have psychical buttons. but that could just be a stock picture of a phone too, so that doesn’t mean much either. just noting it.
I’m thinking future phones will have the software buttons, and there will be a modification to enable to hardware buttons on older phones.
But why? Software buttons make little to no sense on phones, if you ask me. They only take up space on the already small phone screen. I would take physical buttons any day. About the only cool thing software, I can think of, is the possibility to change them with themes.
I am sure software buttons will be on phone, but because of devs ( because they have to do everything lol ) not from manufactures. I just don’t get it for it being stock from manufacturers. Shrugs, that it just me though.