Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Download For Tablet

  
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Welcome to Android 4.0!

Android 4.0 delivers a refined, unified UI for phones and tablets andintroduces innovative features for users and developers. This document providesa glimpse of the many new features and technologies that make Android 4.0simple, beautiful, and beyond smart.

Android 4.0 for Users

Developed by Syndicate Apps, Ice Cream Sandwich 2.4 Launcher is the developer’s interpretation of how the next major release of Android – Android 2.4/4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich – will look like. The launcher is actually based on a handful of “leaked” photos of Ice Cream Sandwich running on a Nexus S.

Five days ago, Sprint announced that the Ice Cream Sandwich OTA was finally ready for the Nexus S 4G, but many of you still haven't received the update prompt. Yesterday, Google released the full. As promised, Google has started rolling out the official Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich to all Nexus S users out there. Being the latest iteration in the Android OS saga, it’s a free treat no one can deny. And here’s how you can get the update this very moment, details after the jump! As promised, Google has started rolling out the official Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich to all Nexus S users out there. Being the latest iteration in the Android OS saga, it's a free treat no one can deny. And here's how you can get the update this very moment, details after the jump!

Welcome to Android 4.0! Android 4.0 delivers a refined, unified UI for phones and tablets and introduces innovative features for users and developers. This document provides a glimpse of the many new features and technologies that make Android 4.0 simple. Nov 18, 2011  I also think that Ice Cream Sandwich will look even better on a tablet than it does on a phone. So, Google has a little bit of work to do, but this really is a serious step up into Android. Jan 04, 2012 Until the Galaxy Tab 8.9 gets an official, stable release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, Galaxy Tab 8.9 users have an option of trying out an unofficial alpha build of Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream.

Simple, beautiful, beyond smart

Android 4.0 builds on the things people love most about Android — easymultitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets,and deep interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating andsharing.

Refined, evolved UI

Focused on bringing the power of Android to the surface, Android 4.0 makescommon actions more visible and lets users navigate withsimple, intuitive gestures. Refined animations and feedbackthroughout the system make interactions engaging and interesting. An entirelynew typeface optimized for high-resolution screens improvesreadability and brings a polished, modern feel to the user interface.

Virtual buttons in the System Bar let users navigate instantly to Back, Home,and Recent Apps. The System Bar and virtual buttons are presentacross all apps, but can be dimmed by applications for full-screen viewing.Users can access each application's contextual options in the ActionBar, displayed at the top (and sometimes also at the bottom) of thescreen.

Multitasking is a key strength of Android and it's made eveneasier and more visual on Android 4.0. The Recent Apps button lets users jumpinstantly from one task to another using the list in the System Bar. The listpops up to show thumbnail images of apps used recently — tapping athumbnail switches to the app.

Jump to the camera or seenotifications without unlocking.
For incoming calls, you canrespond instantly by text.

Rich and interactive notifications let users keep inconstant touch with incoming messages, play music tracks, see real-time updatesfrom apps, and much more. On smaller-screen devices, notifications appear at thetop of the screen, while on larger-screen devices they appear in the SystemBar.

The All Apps launcher (left) and resizable widgets (right) give you apps and richcontent from the home screen.

Home screen folders andfavorites tray

New home screen folders offer a new way for users to grouptheir apps and shortcuts logically, just by dragging one onto another. Also,in All Apps launcher, users can now simply drag an app to getinformation about it or immediately uninstall it, or disable a pre-installed app.

On smaller-screen devices, the home screen now includes a customizablefavorites tray visible from all home screens. Users can dragapps, shortcuts, folders, and other priority items in or out of the favoritestray for instant access from any home screen.

Resizablewidgets

Home screens in Android 4.0 are designed to be content-rich and customizable.Users can do much more than add shortcuts — they can embed liveapplication content directly through interactive widgets.Widgets let users check email, flip through a calendar, play music, check socialstreams, and more — right from the home screen, without having to launchapps. Widgets are resizable, so users can expand them to show more content orshrink them to save space.

New lock screenactions

The lock screens now let users do more without unlocking. From the slide lockscreen, users can jump directly to the camera for a picture orpull down the notifications window to check for messages. Whenlistening to music, users can even manage music tracks and see album art.

Quick responses forincoming calls

When an incoming call arrives, users can now quickly respond by textmessage, without needing to pick up the call or unlock the device. Onthe incoming call screen, users simply slide a control to see a list of textresponses and then tap to send and end the call. Users can add their ownresponses and manage the list from the Settings app.

Swipe to dismissnotifications, tasks, and browser tabs

Android 4.0 makes managing notifications, recent apps, and browser tabs eveneasier. Users can now dismiss individual notifications, apps from the RecentApps list, and browser tabs with a simple swipe of a finger.

A spell-checker lets you find errors and fix them faster.
A powerful voice inputengine lets you dictate continously.

Improved text input andspell-checking

The soft keyboard in Android 4.0 makes text input even faster and moreaccurate. Error correction and word suggestion are improved through a new set ofdefault dictionaries and more accurate heuristics for handling cases such asdouble-typed characters, skipped letters, and omitted spaces. Word suggestionis also improved and the suggestion strip is simplified to show only threewords at a time.

To fix misspelled words more easily, Android 4.0 adds aspell-checker that locates and underlines errors and suggestsreplacement words. With one tap, users can choose from multiple spellingsuggestions, delete a word, or add it to the dictionary. Users can even tap tosee replacement suggestions for words that are spelled correctly. Forspecialized features or additional languages, users can now download and installthird-party dictionaries, spell-checkers, and other text services.

Powerful voice inputengine

Android 4.0 introduces a powerful new voice input engine that offers acontinuous 'open microphone' experience and streaming voice recognition. The newvoice input engine lets users dictate the text they want, for as long as theywant, using the language they want. Users can speak continously for a prolongedtime, even pausing for intervals if needed, and dictate punctuation to createcorrect sentences. As the voice input engine enters text, it underlines possibledictation errors in gray. After dictating, users can tap the underlined words toquickly replace them from a list of suggestions.

Data usage controls let you monitor total usage by network type and application andthen set limits if needed.

Control over networkdata

Mobile devices can make extensive use of network data for streaming content,synchronizing data, downloading apps, and more. To meet the needs of users withtiered or metered data plans, Android 4.0 adds new controls formanaging network data usage.

In the Settings app, colorful charts show the total data usage on eachnetwork type (mobile or Wi-Fi), as well as amount of data used by each runningapplication. Based on their data plans, users can optionally set warning levelsor hard limits on data usage or disable mobile data altogether. Users can alsomanage the background data used by individual applications as needed.

Designed foraccessibility

A variety of new features greatly enhance the accessibility of Android 4.0for blind or visually impaired users. Most important is a newexplore-by-touch mode that lets users navigate without havingto see the screen. Touching the screen once triggers audible feedback thatidentifies the UI component below; a second touch in the same componentactivates it with a full touch event. The new mode is especially important tosupport users on new devices that use virtual buttons in the System Bar, ratherthan dedicated hardware buttons or trackballs. Also, standard apps are updatedto offer an improved accessibility experience. The Browsersupports a script-based screen reader for reading favorite web content andnavigating sites. For improved readability, users can also increase the defaultfont size used across the system.

The accessibility experience begins at first setup — a simpletouch gesture during setup (clockwise square from upper left)activates all accessibility features and loads a setup tutorial. Onceaccessibility features are active, everything visible on the screen can bespoken aloud by the standard screen reader.

Communication and sharing

Contacts and profiles are integrated across apps and social networks, for aconsistent, personal experience everywhere — from incoming calls to emails.

Designed for the way people live, Android 4.0 integrates rich socialcommunication and sharing touchpoints across the system, making it easy to talk,email, text, and share.

People andprofiles

Throughout the system, a user’s social groups, profiles, and contacts arelinked together and integrated for easy accessibility. At the center is a newPeople app that offers richer profile information, including alarge profile picture, phone numbers, addresses and accounts, status updates,events, stream items, and a new button for connecting on integrated social networks.

The user's own contact information is stored in a new 'Me'profile, allowing easier sharing with apps and people. All of theuser's integrated contacts are displayed in an easy to manage list, includingcontrols over which contacts are shown from any integrated account or socialnetwork. Wherever the user navigates across the system, tapping a profile photodisplays Quick Contacts, with large profile pictures, shortcuts to phone numbers,text messaging, and more.

Unified calendar, visualvoicemail

To help organize appointments and events, an updated Calendarapp brings together personal, work, school, and social agendas. Withuser permission, other applications can contribute events to the calendar andmanage reminders, for an integrated view across multiple calendar providers. Theapp is redesigned to let users manage events more easily. Calendars arecolor-coded and users can swipe left or right to change datesand pinch to zoom in or out agendas.

In the phone app, a new visual voicemail features integratesincoming messages, voice transcriptions, and audio files from one or moreproviders. Third-party applications can integrate with the Phone app to addtheir own voice messages, transcriptions, and more to the visual voicemailinbox.

Capture the picture you want,edit, and share instantly.

Rich and versatile cameracapabilities

The Camera app includes many new features that let users capture special momentswith great photos and videos. After capturing images, they can edit and sharethem easily with friends.

When taking pictures, continuous focus, zero shutterlag exposure, and decreased shot-to-shot speed help capture clear,precise images. Stabilized image zoom lets users compose photosand video in the way they want, including while video is recording. For newflexibility and convenience while shooting video, users can now takesnapshots at full video resolution just by tapping the screenas video continues to record.

To make it easier to take great pictures of people, built-in facedetection locates faces in the frame and automatically sets focus. Formore control, users can tap to focus anywhere in the previewimage.

For capturing larger scenes, the Camera introduces a single-motionpanorama mode. In this mode, the user starts an exposure and thenslowly turns the Camera to encompass as wide a perspective as needed. The Cameraassembles the full range of continuous imagery into a single panoramicphoto.

After taking a picture or video, users can quickly share it by email, textmessage, bluetooth, social networks, and more, just by tapping the thumbnail inthe camera controls.

Redesigned Gallery appwith photo editor

The Gallery app now makes it easier to manage, show, and share photos andvideos. For managing collections, a redesigned album layoutshows many more albums and offers larger thumbnails. There are many ways to sortalbums, including by time, location, people, and tags. To help pictures looktheir best, the Gallery now includes a powerful photo editor.Users can crop and rotate pictures, set levels, remove red eyes, add effects,and much more. After retouching, users can select one or multiple pictures orvideos to share instantly over email, text messaging, bluetooth, socialnetworks, or other apps.

An improved Picture Gallery widget lets users look atpictures directly on their home screen. The widget can display pictures from aselected album, shuffle pictures from all albums, or show a single image. Afteradding the widget to the home screen, users can flick through the photo stacksto locate the image they want, then tap to load it in Gallery.

Live Effects let youchange backgrounds and use Silly Faces during video.

Live Effects for transformingvideo

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Live Effects is a collection of graphical transformations that add interestand fun to videos captured in the Camera app. For example, users canchange the background behind them to any stock or custom image,for just the right setting when shooting video. Also available for video isSilly Faces, a set of morphing effects that use state-of-the-art facerecognition and GPU filters to transform facial features. For example, you canuse effects such as small eyes, big mouth, big nose, face squeeze, and more.Outside of the Camera app, Live Effects is available during video chat in theGoogle Talk app.

Sharing with screenshots

Users can now share what's on their screens more easily by takingscreenshots. Hardware buttons let them snap a screenshot andstore it locally. Afterward, they can view, edit, and share the screen shot inGallery or a similar app.

Cloud-connected experience

The Browser tabs menu (left) lets you quickly switch browser tabs. Theoptions menu (right) gives you new ways to manage your browsing experience.

Android has always been cloud-connected, letting users browse the web andsync photos, apps, games, email, and contacts — wherever they are andacross all of their devices. Android 4.0 adds new browsing and emailcapabilities to let users take even more with them and keep communicationorganized.

Powerful webbrowsing

The Android Browser offers an experience that’s as rich and convenient as adesktop browser. It lets users instantly sync and manage Google Chromebookmarks from all of their accounts, jump to their favorite contentfaster, and even save it for reading later in case there's no networkavailable.

To get the most out of web content, users can now request fulldesktop versions of web sites, rather than their mobileversions. Users can set their preference for web sites separately for eachbrowser tab. For longer content, users can save a copy foroffline reading. To find and open saved pages, users can browsea visual list that’s included with browser bookmarks and history. For betterreadability and accessibility, users can increase the browser’s zoomlevels and override the system default text sizes.

Across all types of content, the Android Browser offers dramatically improvedpage rendering performance through updated versions of theWebKit core and the V8 Crankshaft compilation engine for JavaScript. Inbenchmarks run on a Nexus S device, the Android 4.0 browser showed animprovement of nearly 220% over the Android 2.3 browser in the V8 BenchmarkSuite and more than 35% in the SunSpider 9.1 JavaScript Benchmark. When run on aGalaxy Nexus device, the Android 4.0 browser showed improvement of nearly 550%in the V8 benchmark and nearly 70% in the SunSpider benchmark.

Improvedemail

In Android 4.0, email is easier to send, read, and manage. For composingemail, improved auto-completion of recipients helps withfinding and adding frequent contacts more quickly. For easier input of frequenttext, users can now create quick responses and store them inthe app, then enter them from a convenient menu when composing. When replying toa message, users can now toggle the message to Reply All and Forward withoutchanging screens.

For easier browsing across accounts and labels, the app adds anintegrated menu of accounts and recent labels. To help userslocate and organize IMAP and Exchange email, the Email app now supportsnested mail subfolders, each with synchronization rules. Userscan also search across folders on the server, for faster results.

For enterprises, the Email app supports EAS v14. It supportsEAS certificate authentication, provides ABQ strings for device type and mode,and allows automatic sync to be disabled while roaming. Administrators can alsolimit attachment size or disable attachments.

For keeping track of incoming email more easily, a resizable Emailwidget lets users flick through recent email right from the homescreen, then jump into the Email app to compose or reply.

AndroidBeam lets users share what they are using with a single tap.

Innovation

Android is continously driving innovation forward, pushing the boundaries ofcommunication and sharing with new capabilities and interactions.

Android Beam forNFC-based sharing

Android Beam is an innovative, convenient feature for sharing across twoNFC-enabled devices, It lets people instantly exchange favorite apps, contacts,music, videos — almost anything. It’s incredibly simple and convenient touse — there’s no menu to open, application to launch, or pairing needed.Just touch one Android-powered phone to another, then tap to send.

For sharing apps, Android Beam pushes a link to the app's details page inGoogle Play. On the other device, the Google Play client app launches and loads thedetails page, for easy downloading of the app. Individual apps can build onAndroid Beam to add other types of interactions, such as passing game scores,initiating a multiplayer game or chat, and more.

Face recognition lets youunlock your phone with your face.

Face Unlock

Android 4.0 introduces a completely new approach to securing a device, makingeach person's device even more personal — Face Unlock is a new screen-lockoption that lets users unlock their devices with their faces. It takes advantageof the device front-facing camera and state-of-the-art facial recognitiontechnology to register a face during setup and then to recognize it again whenunlocking the device. Users just hold their devices in front of their faces tounlock, or use a backup PIN or pattern.

Wi-Fi P2P and Bluetooth HDP

Support for Wi-Fi peer-to-peer (P2P) lets users connect directly to nearby peerdevices over Wi-Fi, for more reliable, higher-speed communication (in compliance with the Wi-FiAlliance's Wi-Fi Direct™certification program). No internet connection or tethering is needed. Through third-party apps,users can connect to compatible devices to take advantage of new features such as instant sharingof files, photos, or other media; streaming video or audio from another device; or connecting tocompatible printers or other devices.

Android 4.0 also introduces built-in support for connecting to Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) devices. With support from third-party apps, users can connect to wireless medical devices and sensors in hospitals, fitness centers, homes, and elsewhere.

New Developer Features

Unified UI framework for phones, tablets, and more

Android 4.0 brings a unified UI framework that lets developers createelegant, innovative apps for phones, tablets, and more. It includes all of thefamiliar Android 3.x interface elements and APIs — fragments, contentloaders, Action Bar, rich notifications, resizable home screen widgets, and more— as well as new elements and APIs.

For developers, the unified UI framework in Android 4.0 means new UI tools,consistent design practices, simplified code and resources, and streamlineddevelopment across the range of Android-powered devices.

Key Honeycomb developer features, now for phones too

Core UI

  • Fragments and content loaders
  • Resizeable home screen widgets
  • Rich notifications
  • Multi-selection, drag-drop, clipboard
  • Improved screen-support API
  • Hardware-accelerated 2D graphics

Graphics and animation

  • Property-based animation
  • Renderscript 3D graphics

Media and connectivity

  • HTTP Live streaming
  • Bluetooth A2DP and HSP devices
  • Support for RTP
  • MTP/PTP file transfer
  • DRM framework
  • Input from keyboard, mouse, gamepad, joystick

Enterprise

  • Full device encryption
  • DPM policies for encrypted storage and passwords

Communication and sharing

Android 4.0 extends social and sharing features to any application on thedevice. Applications can integrate contacts, profile data, stream items,and calendar events from any of the user’s activities or social networks.

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Social API

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A shared social provider and API provide a new unified store for contacts,profile data, stream items, and photos. Any app or social network with userpermission can contribute raw contacts and make them accessible to other appsand networks. Applications with user permission can also read profile data fromthe provider and display it in their applications.

The social API lets applications store standard contact data as well as newtypes of content for any given contact, including large profile photos, streamitems, and recent activity feedback. Recent activity feedback is a standard way forapplications to “tag” a contact with common activity, such as when the usercalls the contact or sends an email or SMS message. The social provider uses therecent activity feedback as a new signal in ranking, such as for nameauto-complete, to keep the most relevant contacts ranked closest to the top.

Applications can also let users set up a social connection to a contact fromthe People app. When the user touches Add Connection in a contact, the appsends a public intent that other apps can handle, displaying any UI neededto create the social connection.

Building on the social API, developers can add powerful new interactions thatspan multiple social networks and contacts sources.

Calendar API

A shared calendar content provider and framework API make it easier fordevelopers to add calendar services to their apps.

With user permission, any application can add events to the shared databaseand manage dates, attendees, alerts, and reminders. Applications can also readentries from the database, including events contributed by other applications,and handle the display of event alerts and reminders. Using the calendarprovider, applications can take advantage of event data sourced from a varietyof apps and protocols, to offer innovative ways of viewing and managing a user’sevents. Apps can also use calendar data to improve the relevance of theirother content.

For lighter-weight access to calendar services, the Calendar app defines aset of public Intents for creating, viewing, and editing events. Rather thanneeding to implement a calendar UI and integrate directly with the calendarprovider, applications can simply broadcast calendar Intents. When the Calendarapp receives the Intents, it launches the appropriate UI and stores any eventdata entered. Using calendar Intents, for example, apps can let users add eventsdirectly from lists, dialogs, or home screen widgets, such as for makingrestaurant reservations or booking time with friends.

Visual voicemailAPI

A shared Voicemail provider and API allow developers to build applicationsthat contribute to a unified voicemail store. Voicemails are displayed andplayed in the call log tab of the platform’s Phone app.

Android Beam

Android Beam is an NFC-based feature that lets users instantly shareinformation about the apps they are using, just by touching two NFC-enabledphones together. When the devices are in range — within a few centimeters— the system sets up an NFC connection and displays a sharing UI. To sharewhatever they are viewing with the other device, users just touch the screen.

For developers, Android Beam is a new way of triggering almost any type ofproximity-based interaction. For example, it can let users instantly exchangecontacts, set up multiplayer gaming, join a chat or video call, share a photo orvideo, and more. The system provides the low-level NFC support and the sharingUI, while the foreground app provides lightweight data to transfer to the otherdevice. Developers have complete control over the data that is shared and how itis handled, so almost any interaction is possible. For larger payloads,developers can even use Android Beam to initiate a connection and transfer thedata over Bluetooth, without the need for user-visible pairing.

Even if developers do not add custom interactions based on Android Beam theycan still benefit from it being deeply integrated into Android. By default thesystem shares the app’s Google Play URL, so it’s easy for the user todownload or purchase the app right away.

Modular sharingwidget

The UI framework includes a new widget, ShareActionProvider, that letsdevelopers quickly embed standard share functionality and UI in the Action Barof their applications. Developers simply add ShareActionProvider to the menu andset an intent that describes the desired sharing action. The system handles therest, building up the list of applications that can handle the share intent anddispatching the intent when the user chooses from the menu.

New media capabilities

Low-level streamingmultimedia

Android 4.0 provides a direct, efficient path for low-level streamingmultimedia. The new path is ideal for applications that need to maintaincomplete control over media data before passing it to the platform forpresentation. For example, media applications can now retrieve data from anysource, apply proprietary encryption/decryption, and then send the data to theplatform for display.

Applications can now send processed data to the platform as a multiplexedstream of audio/video content in MPEG-2 transport stream format. The platformde-muxes, decodes, and renders the content. The audio track is rendered to theactive audio device, while the video track is rendered to either a Surface or aSurfaceTexture. When rendering to a SurfaceTexture, the application can applysubsequent graphics effects to each frame using OpenGL.

To support this low-level streaming, the platform introduces a new native APIbased on KhronosOpenMAX AL 1.0.1. The API is implemented on the same underlying services asthe platform’s existing OpenSL ES API, so developers can make use of both APIstogether if needed. Tools support for low-level streaming multimedia will beavailable in an upcoming release of the Android NDK.

New cameracapabilities

Developers can take advantage of a variety of new camera features in Android4.0. ZSL exposure, continuous focus, and image zoom let apps capture betterstill and video images, including during video capture. Apps can even capturefull-resolution snapshots while shooting video. Apps can now set custom meteringregions in a camera preview, then manage white balance and exposure dynamicallyfor those regions. For easier focusing and image processing, a face-detectionservice identifies and tracks faces in a preview and returns their screencoordinates.

Media effects fortransforming images and video

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A set of high-performance transformation filters let developers apply richeffects to any image passed as an OpenGL ES 2.0 texture. Developers can adjustcolor levels and brightness, change backgrounds, sharpen, crop, rotate, add lensdistortion, and apply other effects. The transformations are processed by theGPU, so they are fast enough for processing image frames loaded from disk,camera, or video stream.

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Audio remotecontrols

Android 4.0 adds a new audio remote control API that lets media applicationsintegrate with playback controls that are displayed in a remote view. Mediaapplications can integrate with a remote music playback control that’s builtinto in the platform’s lock screen, allowing users to control song selection andplayback without having to unlock and navigate to the music app.

Using the audio remote control API, any music or media app can register toreceive media button events from the remote control and then manage play stateaccordingly. The application can also supply metadata to the remote control,such as album art or image, play state, track number and description, duration,genre, and more.

New media codecs andcontainers

Android 4.0 adds support for additional media types and containers to givedevelopers access to the formats they need. For high-quality compressed images,the media framework adds support for WebP content. For video, the framework nowsupports streaming VP8 content. For streaming multimedia, the framework supportsHTTP Live streaming protocol version 3 and encoding of ADTS-contained AACcontent. Additionally, developers can now use Matroska containers for Vorbis andVP8 content.

New types of connectivity

Wi-Fi P2P

Developers can use a framework API to discover and connect directly to nearby devices over ahigh-performance, secure Wi-Fi peer-to-peer (P2P) connection. No internet connection or hotspot isneeded. Android's Wi-Fi P2P framework complies with the Wi-Fi Alliance's Wi-Fi Direct™certification program.

Wi-Fi peer-to-peer (P2P) opens new opportunities for developers to add innovativefeatures to their applications. Applications can use Wi-Fi P2P to sharefiles, photos, or other media between devices or between a desktop computer andan Android-powered device. Applications could also use Wi-Fi P2P to streammedia content from a peer device such as a digital television or audio player,connect a group of users for gaming, print files, and more.

Bluetooth Health DeviceProfile (HDP)

Developers can now build powerful medical applications that use Bluetooth tocommunicate with wireless devices and sensors in hospitals, fitness centers,homes, and elsewhere. Applications can collect and manage data from HDP sourcedevices and transmit it to backend medical applications such as records systems,data analysis services, and others.

Using a framework API, applications can use Bluetooth to discover nearbydevices, establish reliable or streaming data channels, and manage datatransmission. Applications can supply any IEEE 11073 Manager to retrieve andinterpret health data from Continua-certified devices such as heart-ratemonitors, blood meters, thermometers, and scales.

New UI components and capabilities

Layoutenhancements

A new layout, GridLayout, improves the performance of Android applications bysupporting flatter view hierarchies that are faster to layout and render.Because hierarchies are flatter, developers can also manage alignments betweencomponents that are visually related to each other even when they are notlogically related, for precise control over application UI. GridLayout is alsospecifically designed to be configured by drag-and-drop design tools such asAndroid Studio.

OpenGL ES textureviews

A new TextureView object lets developers directly integrate OpenGL EStextures as rendering targets in a UI hierarchy. The object lets developersdisplay and manipulate OpenGL ES rendering just as they would a normal viewobject in the hierarchy, including moving, transforming, and animating the viewas needed. The TextureView object makes it easy for developers to embed camerapreview, decoded video, OpenGL game scenes, and more. TextureView can be viewedas a more powerful version of the existing SurfaceView object, since it offersthe same benefits of access to a GL rendering surface, with the added advantageof having that surface participate fully in the normal view hierarchy.

Hardware-accelerated 2Ddrawing

All Android-powered devices running Android 4.0 are required to supporthardware-accelerated 2D drawing. Developers can take advantage of this to addgreat UI effects while maintaining optimal performance on high-resolutionscreens, even on phones. For example, developers can rely on acceleratedscaling, rotation, and other 2D operations, as well as accelerated UI componentssuch as TextureView and compositing modes such as filtering, blending, andopacity.

New input types and text services

Stylus input, buttonsupport, hover events

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Android 4.0 includes full support for stylus input events, including tilt anddistance axes, pressure, and related motion event properties. To helpapplications distinguish motion events from different sources, the platform addsdistinct tool types for stylus, finger, mouse, and eraser. For improved inputfrom multi-button pointing devices, the platform now provides distinct primary,secondary, and tertiary buttons, as well as back and forward buttons.Hover-enter and hover-exit events are also added, for improved navigation andaccessibility. Developers can build on these new input features to add powerfulinteractions to their apps, such as precise drawing and gesturing, handwritingand shape recognition, improved mouse input, and others.

Text services API forintegrating spelling checkers

Android 4.0 lets applications query available text services such asdictionaries and spell checkers for word suggestions, corrections, and similardata. The text services are external to the active IME, so developers can createand distribute dictionaries and suggestion engines that plug into the platform.When an application receives results from a text service — for example,word suggestions — it can display them in a dedicated suggestion popupwindow directly inside the text view, rather than relying on the IME to displaythem.

Enhanced accessibility APIs

Android 4.0 adds new accessibility features and an enhanced API to letdevelopers improve the user experience in their apps, especially on devices thatdon’t have hardware buttons. For accessibility services such as screen readersin particular, the platform offers new APIs to query window content, for easiernavigation, better feedback, and richer user interfaces.

AccessibilityAPI

To let applications manage interactions more effectively when accessibilityfeatures are enabled, the platform adds accessibility events forexplore-by-touch mode, scrolling, and text selection. For these and otherevents, the platform can attach a new object called an accessibility record thatprovides extra information about the event context.

Using the accessibility record and related APIs, applications can now accessthe view hierarchy associated with an event. Applications can query for keyproperties such as parent and child nodes, available states, supported actions,screen position, and more. Applications can also request changes to certainproperties to help manage focus and selected state. For example, anaccessibility service could use these new capabilities to add convenientfeatures such as screen-search by text.

Text-to-speechAPI

A new framework API lets developers write text-to-speech engines and makethem available to any app requesting TTS capabilities.

Efficient network usage

In Android 4.0, users can see how much network data their running apps areusing. They can also set limits on data usage by network type and disablebackground data usage for specific applications. In this context, developersneed to design their apps to run efficiently and follow best practices forchecking the network connection. Android 4.0 provides network APIs to letapplications meet those goals.

As users move between networks or set limits on network data, the platformlets applications query for connection type and availability. Developers can usethis information to dynamically manage network requests to ensure the bestexperience for users. Developers can also build custom network and selected-rating='0' hover-rating-star='0'>