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GoogleIn October, Google launched Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, for tablets and smartphones. The platform has two purposes: unify the software for use on both devices and make the tablet experience better. Prior to Android 4.0, large Google tablets ran on version 3 of Android, called Honeycomb, but the overall effort seemed rushed and incomplete.
Longtime Android user Jason Perlow has run Android 4.0 on his Motorola tablet for the past two weeks. He shared his impressions on Tuesday. Although I don’t currently have Android 4.0 on a tablet here, I’ve used Google’s platform for about as long as Perlow has, and we both use Galaxy Nexus phones that run the Ice Cream Sandwich software. I’m concerned because Perlow is already finding usability issues with an Android 4.0 tablet: “Is it better than Honeycomb? Yes. But it’s not without its own share of problems,” he writes. “It’s going to take some time for apps to catch up to it, and you might want to consider using hardware that is actually up to the task of providing an optimal experience with the new OS.”
Perlow points out some of the same positives I’ve seen when using my new handset: The user interface is more consistent—elegant by comparison to prior versions—and more responsive overall. I see this on my Galaxy Nexus on a daily basis. Even if Perlow hadn’t pointed it out to readers, it’s clear to me that there are still inconsistencies within Android 4.0 on different devices.
For example, at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, a vendor was showing me an Android tablet running on Intel’s new Atom chip. I asked if it was Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich. He said the latter. Then I noticed the Apps button at the top right of the display. On my Android 4.0 phone, that button is on the bottom of the screen, so I questioned the tablet version.
He checked, and sure enough, it was Android 4.0. Why would the same operating system have two different ways to access apps? Notifications are located on the bottom right on the tablet, but on the top of the phone. How does this unify the platform?
Perlow’s other main hang-up is the task-switching functionality in Android 4.0. I like it on my Galaxy Nexus, but I see his point about the purpose of the feature: It’s not clear to end-users how it works. Honeycomb used the same method, but it’s enhanced in Android 4.0.
Here’s how it works: A dedicated button pulls up small application snapshots of your most recently used apps. To switch, you simply tap on one. That’s intuitive and effective. You can also swipe these little app windows off the display. Does that mean those tasks are killed? Not likely, says Perlow. My own research confirms what he says: “[T]he “Recent tasks” button is in fact a task-switcher that can in fact stop tasks, but it’s not a particularly useful one because even though it is supposed to “nice kill” the processes when you stop them, it doesn’t stop services from re-spawning and it won’t necessarily kill badly behaving applications—like say, Facebook, which has to be one of the most awfully written pieces of garbage since iTunes. So you have to end up using the real task killer in the Settings menu, anyway.”
Swiping the tasks, at least on my Android 4.0 smartphone, simply removes them from the recently used task list. As Perlow says, you have to go to the actual task-killing function in Settings. An alternative I’ve found is a bit of a shortcut: Tapping and holding a recently used app provides an “App Info” option. Click it, and you’re taken to the settings for that particular app so you can kill the task.
