Test Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and Galaxy Nexus - II

Multitasking on steroids

In general, the management of concurrent tasks is a strong point of Android, which also strengthens from year to year, while applications are iOS silos with an inlet, an outlet, and a sense of movement well accurate, Android applications can communicate, report and act more freely.

Would be found almost across the mobile, the fundamental philosophical difference between applications on the Macintosh and Windows programs. The home screen in a grid of icons iOS thus opposes prototype office what the home screen of Android. The center of notifications appears almost as moved on iOS: it is a layer on top of the grid icon (bringing yet the texture of the layer below the grid) which is not really connected. From this point of view, Android has an advantage - or even as webOS Windows Phone 7 -: multitasking is an integral part of its operation, not a succession of additions more or less integrated after the fact.

Thus, the widgets provide the content and functions from the home screen, outside of applications to which they refer: we can change the current song, check your latest tweets, turn Wi-Fi, call a contact on his cell phone, do a Google search directly from the home screen with various widgets. The management of these small windows has been greatly improved in Android 4.0: they have their own tab in the application launcher, and is now positioned on a grid clearly drawn.

The "notification center" Android has also been redesigned. He always appears with a gesture from top to bottom from the taskbar (which still suffers from overweight as it bears a certain notifications), but it is now clearer, easier to manage, and incidentally more enjoyable ( transitions, etc.).. Positive: it offers direct access to phone settings.

The bursting of applications services is almost a constant Android: each application can declare a suite of services it can offer to others, and so to integrate. For example, from the camera, you can directly send a picture via Bluetooth, Picasa, SMS / MMS by default, but also Facebook, Google +, Gmail, Twitter, Path, and Skype is on track since the corresponding applications are installed. The integration of these services is much more subtle in Android 4.0, which avoids the accordion effect of long lists of previous versions - and avoids the constant back and forth between applications imposed by IOS.