A More Robust User Interface

                The most immediately obvious improvement in Ice Cream Sandwich is a cleaner, better-looking UI. The improved notifications drop-down menu appends a built-in settings button for easy access to the device’s control center and adds the ability to dismiss notifications and updates by swiping them off of the screen.  In ICS, icons can be grouped into folders on the home screens by dragging one on top of another, and widgets are now resizable.  The applications pane now also displays available widgets and swipes from left to right instead of scrolling vertically.  The user experience feels altogether more polished with snappy screen transitions and built-in animations for closing the applications pane and turning off the screen.

Better Email and IT Features

Android 4.0 provides a more enterprise-friendly experience for the corporate user.  For the first time, IT departments can enforce Exchange ActiveSync policies requiring Android devices to be encrypted before connecting to a mail server.  (But be forewarned, the encryption process in Android 4.0 is irreversible short of performing a factory reset of the phone!)  Ice Cream Sandwich also makes working with email easier than ever.  The new built-in spell-check functionality recognizes a wider range of terms, resolves errors more accurately, and provides only 3 suggestions for misspelled terms instead of the previous 5.

More Power to the People

The tech-savvy android fan will appreciate just how much power Android 4.0 puts in the hands of its users.  Ice Cream Sandwich stops short of granting a user the ability to uninstall manufacturer-loaded bloatware, but it does take a very important step forward by introducing the disable applications feature.  Instead of using an exploit to grab Root access in order to uninstall unwanted software, Android 4.0 allows any standard user to disable most preloaded applications – effectively preventing them from running.  ICS also provides granular control over network data.  Users can monitor how much data each application consumes and set hard limits at which the phone will stop consuming data, thus avoiding painful overage fees.

Add to this list all of the features that I have not had the opportunity to touch on and it’s pretty easy to see why Ice Cream Sandwich represents a must-have upgrade for any Android user.

As I previously mentioned, the Android OS is a shortfall of the Nexus One when using it for business. Google integrated applications, such as Google Maps, work excellent but the business tools do not. The most notorious feature that is still missing is the ability to synchronize the calendar with Microsoft Exchange. Since switching from my Blackberry to the Nexus One I have been late to or have missed dozens of appointments because of the lack of reminders. Key business features that are also missing include e-mail signatures, notifications for high-priority emails only, and poor cut and paste functionality. Additionally, the layout of the keyboard is hard to get used to. The keys are smaller than those on the iPhone and the spacebar is very close to the Home and Menu hard keys which results in frequent miscues of those functions.

Security is a major issue with mobile devices and there are two major security issues with the Nexus One. First, the Android OS does not support Exchange Remote Wipe for erasing data from lost devices and second is what I call ‘Google’ security. When setting up the device Google asks if it is ok to upload information to Google about the phone’s location, and in order to use certain features like the calendar you must integrate with Google applications requiring Google Accounts. This puts the user in a precarious position where sensitive data could possibly be transmitted and stored on Google servers which is unacceptable for most business security policies.

To wrap up on a positive note, Google is definitely headed in the right direction with the Android OS and Nexus One, especially with their no contract purchasing plan. Once Google provides the critical business functionality that is currently missing then Google might have a real Blackberry or iPhone killer on their hands.