Review: Updated: Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich

Ice Cream Sandwich used to be the new kid on the block, but it's been usurped by the likes of Android 4.2: Jelly Bean as the OS to have on the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S3 and Google Nexus 4.

However, loads of users are still waiting for their Ice Cream Sandwich update, and Google told us that this is one of the biggest overhauls of the operating systems since it unleashed the Android project three years ago - and there's certainly a lot to plough through.

From enhanced contact menus to improved keyboards and NFC capabilities, even the most ardent Android users will have to spend some time getting used to the new OS if they've never been Android 4 - so let's dive in.

The most noticeable change with Ice Cream Sandwich is the interface - it might follow the same principles as the Android of old, but the way it's used is radically different in a number of ways.

Firstly, Android 4.0 is designed to work without buttons. However, it's clear that notion has died, as physical buttons are still everywhere over a year on... so don't worry if you're a fan of a good home button.

Now to navigate around, you're offered three softkeys: Back, Home and Multi-tasking (or Recent Apps). The latter is particularly new for phones, and comes from the Honeycomb UI - basically a set of thumbnails that show recently opened apps.

Here's the new part: swipe sideways to shut down an application, which will greatly help reduce the battery consumption of your phone if there's something silently updating in the background.

The Home and Back buttons are the same as they've always been, but no longer have a 'long press' function attached... so you can't automatically call up the keyboard, for instance.

If you move into something media-ish, such as watching a movie or browsing the web like a pro, these three buttons shrink down to tiny dots, so you've got more of the screen to look at. However, remember what each dot does, as pressing it will take you home/open the recent apps etc and you might not want to.

For Android fans, this presents something of an issue: with the menu button gone, you'll have to hunt around the screen for three vertical dots which have taken its place. However, these can be anywhere, so sometimes you'll get distracted trying to work out how on earth to alter settings.

The multi-tasking pane also seems an odd choice for one of three buttons - it used to be you could access this functionality by long-pressing the home key, and it makes more sense to keep this and then have the multi-tasking slot taken up by a menu key.

However, despite the odd placement, the multi-tasking pane is cool - simply swipe horizontally on any open app to shut it down, in a similar way to the Cards system on webOS - it certainly helps keep open applications under control.

The home screens are once again limited to five, but this time there's no option to get rid of those you don't want. It's not a huge issue to some people, but with the expandable widgets and loads of apps you'll be looking to download, we'd have expected more.

This isn't the case with most other phones, which will extend it to at least seven screen, but Google likes to be stingy.

There's a plethora of tiny tweaks and changes to the Android OS that we were impressed with, ranging from the Tron-like blue theme that pervades throughout the OS to the ability to unlock the phone simply by using your face.

The latter security option is more novelty than anything else, with Google outlining at the start that it's not meant to be 100% secure.

We also found a few issues with getting it to recognise our face in varying light levels, or even working out which bit of the picture was a face - not the most effective for unlocking your handset, but when it works it's a great party trick.

This has been updated in Android Jelly Bean to include blink detection, but you sadly won't have this option if you're stuck on Ice Cream Sandwich.

The notifications bar has been given a functionality overhaul to now include larger information slots - if it's a contact that's sending you a message or a missed call, their contact photo will now appear too, which is a nice touch.

And sometimes you want to get rid of some notifications, but not others - this has been taken care of by allowing you to swipe away the updates about apps and messages you don't care about, making it easy to maintain your info bar.

Settings has also been given a spot in the notifications pane, meaning no matter where you are in the OS you can always duck out and tinker with the phone - this is excellent news for some applications that need GPS or Wi-Fi enabled swiftly.

However, we would have though Google would have copied the likes of Samsung here and offered one-tap switching to these elements - it works really well on most phones, so we're surprised by its omission.

The other new addition is the dock at the bottom of the screen - this stays on every home screen, and like iOS can be altered to contain the applications you like to tap away at the most.

Folders are more iOS-like too, with users given the ability to drag and drop icons on top of one another from the home screen to create bundles of apps which you can simply rename. Given Apple's ire about Google 'stealing' certain elements of its UI, we can't help but think this created a little more angst down on Infinite Loop.

Google is clearly also thinking about giving users more ability to enjoy apps than ever before by putting a link to the Market in the top right hand corner of the menu screen, which we really liked as it meant we always knew we could quickly update our app catalogue when needed.

The other big change is widgets have been brought to the fore: you can now look at each one on the menu screen without having to actually select it - this really helps when a new application you've downloaded has an associated widget and you're wondering whether to waste time popping it on the home screen.

Overall, we love what Google has done with the Ice Cream Sandwich UI. It's nothing mind-blowing, but the little touches here and there will add to user delight, and that's what's needed to chip away at those that are dyed-in-the-wool iPhone users.

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Review: TomTom for Android review

For several years you had a choice when it came to in-car navigation. Factory-fit or dedicated device.

But now there's a third option: Full-function, turn-by-turn sat nav apps for smartphones. TomTom's just added to the party with its somewhat belated app for Android.

In theory you get all the advantages of a dedicated nav device, but without the need to buy an extra device or pay for an additional data plan and all that jazz that comes with a high end sat nav device. It's got to be a win, surely?

The proposition only gets stronger when you consider that TomTom is one of the very best nav specialists and Android the most popular smartphone platform. And with the app you get free map updates... for life. What's not to like?

For one thing, there are plenty of alternative navigation apps for the Android platform. Oh, yeah, and lest you have forgotten, Google Maps for Android does the turn-by-turn thing for free. So TomTom for Android needs to be a bit special.

Indeed, this app could be important as the nav industry is in a critical transitional phase. Dedicated devices, otherwise known as personal navigation devices or PNDs look like an endangered species. So it's quality of mapping and associated services that really matter.

TomTom knows this and is very progressive. But partnership with Apple with iOS has hardly started how they hoped. Anyway, interesting times. let's have a look at what tomtom's new app for android actually delivers. First the theoreticals.

Available to buy now from Google Play (Android App Store on devices with older versions of Android), a wide range of map packs are available. We tested the pan-European map pack.

Yours for £30.99 it's a big old download, clocking in over 3GB, so you'll need plenty of available storage on your device. Note also we couldn't find any options for choosing the storage location, which could be a problem if you've maxed out your internal memory and we're hoping to stick TomTom onto a storage card.

That said, the download is a one-time hit and critically means you have those maps stored locally. You're not dependent on an internet connection for basic navigation, in other words, though you'll need one for some of the live services, including HD Traffic.

Also, for the record the UK-only map is under 400MB in size, so if you're not planning on a Euro tour, storage needs are far from excessive, and it's cheaper to buy that option compared to the full UK & Europe version.

As it happens, it's at this installation stage that the TomTom app's biggest problem appears. At launch it only works with 800 x 480 and 854 x 540 screen resolutions. So the latest generation of 720p HD handsets with 1,280 x 720 screens are totally incompatible.

That rules out pretty much all of the hot handsets out there at the moment. Hmmm.

Anyway, beyond simple mapping, the app delivers TomTom's funky connected features. For starters, this means HD Traffic that's miles better than the RDS-TMC data that most built-in navigation devices rely on.

Then there's TomTom IQ routes, which takes into account things like historical data for traffic flows to work out the best possible routes, rather than just relying of theoretical information like posted speed limits and simple distances.

Rounding the feature set out are usual TomTom suspects like Google-powered Local Search, an offline POI database and of course seven-digit postcode support. The latter is something you may be surprised to learn still isn't supported by some factory-fit navigation systems.

First up, the TomTom app benefits from smartphone installation straight away thanks to the capacitive touch screens and responsive interfaces on Android devices. It makes for a much slicker, less frustrating experience than the resistive screens users of TomTom's own devices know all too well.

As for the actual graphics and mapping quality, that's never been a TomTom strength if you're looking for Hollywood style 3D visuals. But what matters here is clarity and legibility and just like TomTom's dedicated devices, the app absolutely delivers.

It's not absolutely identical to TomTom's own devices. But where it differs, it's usually better, with a drop shadow here or a transparency there giving the app a slightly more contemporary feel.

Critically, however, the stuff you really need, things like time to destination, distance to destination, your speed and the local speed limit remain available to be overlaid on the map.

TomTom's familiar prompts and cues for upcoming exits and junctions, too. They're probably the best in the business. Certainly, you're much less likely to misinterpret and TomTom guidance cue than that of most built-in navigation solutions.

As with TomTom devices, the POI and Local Search setup is a bit confusing. It's not immediately obvious to new users why you'd use one over the other and can be tricky to use to find things that ought to be easy, like train stations and major airports.

We'd like to see all this unified in a much cleverer single context-aware search function. Elsewhere, extras like the speed camera database and HD Traffic work just like they do on TomTom devices, which is to say pretty well.

Problem is, you have to pay extra for both. HD Traffic is £3.99 a month or £26.99. The numbers for the camera database are £1.49 and £16.99 respectively.

That said, we're happy to report it runs pretty smoothly on a rather stately, two-year old Samsung Galaxy S. In fact, even on such an ancient handset it calculate routes pretty niftily.

Exactly how it runs on the latest HD uber phones, we'll have to wait and see. As we mentioned, that's because the app is not currently compatible with 720p HD screens. When it is, it'll be a much more popular option and we'll take another look at it.

We can imagine the route calculation tearing along at quite a lick on the latest dual and quad-core CPUs. Still, it's a very odd oversight from TomTom to launch without HD handset support.

Oh, and don't forget you'll need some kind of cradle and charger to use the app properly, which will add to the cost. But assuming your handset is compatible, you can now have the full TomTom experience without a standalone device.

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Review: TomTom Hands Free Car Kit for Android

Robust designBluetooth pairing worked wellSpeaker volumePrice too highDoesn't do enough

£20. That's the price difference between this Hands-free car kit for your Smartphone and the cheapest TomTom sat-nav, the Start 20 UK & Ireland.

£20 doesn't seem like an awful lot, especially when the difference between the two products is so vast, so its £20 we were eyeing up before we even opened up this kit that turns your smartphone into your in-car navigation.

The TomTom Start 20 is a stand-alone sat nav offering lane guidance, spoken street names and access to TomTom's maps. This hands-free kit meanwhile relies on your mobile phone to do the hard work and merely holds your phone at the right angle. Actually it does a little more, but we're not convinced it really does enough.

The kit itself is made up of several parts, but the main unit is a reassuringly robust holder for your phone, boasting an integrated 2W speaker, an extendable microphone and a charger.

This unit plugs into your cigarette lighter via standard USB cable and charger, while a pass-through cable can be used to charge your phone while you're out and about too. This last point is important because using your phone's GPS will rapidly run down your phones battery on even a modest journey.

The big selling point for the TomTom Hands-free car kit is that despite plugging in to your phone and holding it in place, the communication is actually handled over Bluetooth. This means you can enjoy hands-free calling, even when you're phone isn't docked. Simply pair the car kit and your phone up and you're good to go.

The mounting system is versatile, capable of holding your phone in portrait or landscape mode and as it support phones up to 127.5mm high and 80.5mm wide, it should hopefully outlive your current mobile phone. We did find it quite a bulky mounting system though, requiring locating higher up the screen that we'd want with a dedicated sat-nav, and thus obscuring more of the windscreen.

In operation we found the TomTom Hands-free car kit for Smartphone to be lacklustre. The speaker volume was a little louder than the phone itself, but still too quiet to have your radio on at the same time. The standard Google Navigation voice sounds fine coming from the phones speaker, but sounds clipped and hollow through this.

You could use the kit to transform your phone into your in-car music player, but the speaker quickly shows its weaknesses here, and well, basically you'll only try this once and then never murder your music collection like that ever again.

The pricing hangs heavy over this kit as a value proposition too, coming in as it does so close to TomTom's own budget sat nav, the TomTom Start 20. We'd pick that up over this every time.

If you do want to use your phone as a sat nav, car kits for the most popular phones can be picked up for less than £10, with more versatile units with charges bouncing in for £20.

Of course such bargain solutions don't have the Bluetooth cleverness that TomTom has used, but then having used it, we're not convinced that such features add enough to warrant the price hike anyway.

TomTom is capable of much more than this, but as it stands it just doesn't do enough to warrant the high price tag. Even spend more on a proper sat nav, or a little less on a cheaper mounting system. Just don't bother with this.

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Android extends lead over Apple iPhone

Google's free mobile operating system was installed on 64.1 per cent of smarphones sold worldwide in the second quarter, compared to 43.4 per cent a year ago to, according to Gartner, the industry analysts.

It benefitted from the declines of Symbian, Nokia’s largely abandoned smartphone operating system, and of RIM. BlackBerry’s market share was more than halved from 11.7 per cent to 5.2 per cent on the year.

Apple’s smartphone operating system market share in the second quarter was meanwhile 18.8 per cent, up slightly from 18.2 per cent a year ago. Gartner said iOS users appeared to be holding off purchasing a new device before the expected introduction of the iPhone 5 in September.

Microsoft’s slow response to the smartphone boom continued, with Windows Mobile growing from 1.6 per cent to 2.7 per cent.

On the manufacturing side, Apple and Samsung maintained their rivalry ahead of other players such as HTC and Huawei.

“Samsung and Apple continued to dominate the smartphone market, together taking about half the market share, and widening the gap to other manufacturers,” said analyst Anshul Gupta.

“No other smartphone vendors had share close to 10 per cent.”

The leading pair are currently locked in a high-stakes court battle in the United States, trading accusations of patent infringement.

Samsung did particularly well out of the Galaxy SIII, which exceeded expectations. It extended its lead as the world’s biggest maker of smartphones and feature phones, with overall sales up almost 30 per cent on a year ago and a market share of 21.6 per cent.

By comparison Apple, which does not compete in the less-profitable feature phone market, had a 6.9 per cent share of the overall mobile phone market, up from 4.6 per cent.

Despite such success and the continuing boom in the smartphone sector, where 42.7 per cent more devices were sold compared to a year ago, the total mobile phone market declined by 2.3 per cent to 419 million units. Gartner attributed the slip to the economic crisis, as well as product launch cycles.

“Thee challenging economic environment and users postponing upgrades to take advantage of high-profile device launches and promotions available later in the year slowed demand across markets,” said Mr Gupta.

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HTC leads the new wave of Android superphones

A new wave of mobile phones is about to launch and first out of the starting gate for Google is not Samsung or Motorola or Sony – it’s comparative minnow HTC.

The Taiwan-based company’s new ‘One’ series of phones, headed by the flagship ‘One X’, has generated more excitement among British networks than any device perhaps since Apple’s latest iPhone. That’s in part due to a huge marketing push led by the firm’s TV commercial featuring a photography student using the phone to take a picture while skydiving, but few mobile phone company’s fans have the ardour of HTC’s.

Coming to mainstream attention in 2009 with the best-selling Hero and then Desire handsets, HTC went on to make the first device with a dedicated button for social networking site Facebook. It was also the first mobile phone manufacturer chosen by Google to produce a device in direct collaboration with the search giant.

Now after a rocky intervening 18-months, the firm is resurgent and its new premise is refreshing: co-founder and chief executive Peter Chou says “It's my personal mission, and my mission for everyone at HTC, to come up with phones with features that really matter". That means a focus on cameras, music and ease of use that many other manufacturers are seeking to ape.

Announcing the new range in January, the firm presented Chou as a technology sage not completely unlike the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. It was Chou’s own history that was used to showcase the new device’s features, and it was he who continues to talk about his firm offering “a unique blend of form and function that will take Android to new heights”.

And that’s consistently been HTC’s message – its new tagline for the One series is “Amazing camera. Authentic sound”. As new buyers come as much from geeks as they do from people buying their first smartphone, what matters is not technical specifications but what these devices do.

So as rival phones increasingly offer similar music and camera functions, HTC is investing further in its ‘Sense’ interface, which aims to make the phone easier to use and more intuitive, whether that’s via a good-looking weather forecast or automatically selecting the best photograph from a selection you’ve just taken.

“At its essence, the mobile phone is the most personal item you have in your possession," says Chou. "HTC Sense was created to magnify your ability to create and define your own unique mobile experience."

Analysts are backing HTC too. Ben Wood of CCS Insight says that competition is ferocious in the face of “a rampant Apple, hungry new Chinese brands and Samsung’s eye-watering marketing spend “. But he adds that “the HTC One devices are strong products that will ensure HTC sees further success in 2012”.

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Motorola's Google era starts with three powerful Android smartphones

Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD
Motorola rolled out its first smartphones of the Google era on Wednesday, unveiling three additions to its Droid Razr smartphone lineup.
The three new phones—the Razr M, Droid Razr HD, and Razr Maxx HD—weren't exactly surprises: A handful of product images had been leaked on Twitter over the few days prior to the company's New York City press conference. But the Android-based smartphones are the first to come out of Motorola Mobility since that company's $12.4 billion purchase by Google was finalized in May.
The Razr M improves upon the original Droid Razr by making the phone thinner and shorter without decreasing its 4.3-inch display. The Razr HD takes the product line one step further, adding 78 percent more pixels on its 4.7-inch display and 40 percent more battery life than the Droid Razr. The Razr Maxx HD is the most powerful of the three phones with 32 hours of battery life with typical use (or 21 hours of straight talk time, eight hours of Web-surfing or 13 hours of video-streaming). Like the Razr HD, the Razr Maxx HD has a 4.7-inch display.
Motorola Droid Razr M
All three models run on Verizon's 4G LTE network. The Droid Razr HD and Razr Maxx HD will debut in time for the holiday shopping rush, and the Razr M will be on Verizon store shelves Sept. 13. The Razr M retails for $100 with a two-year Verizon contract and rebate.
Motorola is joining the full slate of phone manufacturers announcing new products this month. Earlier Wednesday, Nokia unveiled its latest Windows Phone 8, the Lumia 920. HTC and Apple are expected to unveil new phones next week.
The new Razrs run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Users will be able to upgrade to the next version, Jelly Bean, by the end of the year.
Motorola Droid Razr HD
As of July, Android remains the leading smartphone platform, at least according to analytics company comScore, which says that Google's mobile OS enjoys a 52.2 percent market share. comScore surveyed more than 30,000 mobile phone users. The same survey indicated that Motorola is the fourth-ranked mobile phone manufacturer with 11.2 percent of the market. Samsung leads with more than 25 percent of the market.


Google has set out to remake Motorola, which has lagged behind Samsung and Apple in the mobile phone manufacturing market. Motorola phones were once the hottest on the market, with the Razr ubiquitous in 2004. With an expanded Razr product line, Google is aiming to recapture Motorola's former glory.
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