Everyone is going ga-ga over Ice Cream Sandwich. Ever since it was
released, third-party Android developers have been hard at work porting
leaks into every possible phone and improving the stock firmware with
additions of their own. We’ve seen Ice Cream Sandwich in stock form, in
it’s purest form without HTC’s Sense UI on top, various aesthetically
modified versions, as well as those that have been given performance
boosts.
It makes sense that because Ice Cream Sandwich is the hottest thing
making rounds in the Android development community that everyone would
want a piece of it, but what makes Ice Cream Sandwich so great? To
answer your question, we’ve put together a list of the top 10 things you
can do on your Ice Cream Sandwich phone. Keep in mind, this is in no
particular order.
Face Unlock
The first thing you notice with Ice Cream Sandwich is that it looks
different from Gingerbread but you’re probably being too busy checking
out the new wallpaper on your lock screen to realize that you can unlock
your phone without entering a password.
Thanks to Face Unlock, your phone uses its front-facing camera to
recognize you. This means that it unlocks only when you pick it up,
effectively preventing nosy friends, family and strangers from perusing
your phone’s content when you aren’t looking. Simply hold up your phone
at eye level and your phone should detect your face.
Face Unlock isn’t perfect, though, and a number of factors may
prevent your phone’s front-facing camera to see your face properly.
While setting up Face Unlock, you can choose between Pattern unlock and
PIN unlock as a backup plan if ever Face Unlock fails to identify your
face.
Another possible problem is if someone who looks like you, like a
family member with the same set of features, or an evil twin, may
actually be able to effectively unlock your phone with his/her face.
But, what are the chances of that happening?
Multitasking
Since phones have become more powerful, packing specs that the phones
of yesteryears could only dream of, the temptation to do too many
things at once on your Android device has been calling to users. The
number of things we could do with apps certainly isn’t helping us keep
away from temptation.
In older versions of Android software, users had to download a task
switcher application for their phones, but with Ice Cream Sandwich, that
is no longer necessary. Just long-press on the Home button to see which
applications are open. Scroll through little screenshots and tap the
one that you want to jump into. You can jump back out by tapping the
same button.
Click this bar to view the full image. |
If that isn’t cool enough, multitasking also means lightening the
load on your phone. When you’re looking at the list of open
applications, you won’t need to individually jump into an application to
close it. Simply swipe the application’s little screenshot off your
screen to the right and the application is gone and closed. Ice Cream
Sandwich effectively lets you manage your resources without wasting
unnecessary time.
Quick Call Response
There are two things that all safety-conscious drivers nowadays
should know. The first one is “Don’t drink and drive.” The second one,
which is equally important, is “Don’t text and drive.” In fact, if you
can help it, don’t pick up your phone. You never know when an accident
is just lurking behind the corner.
But let’s just say that you can’t resist your phone ringing several
times and you really want to tell the person calling that you can’t
answer his/her call because you’re driving. You don’t need to wait for a
red light to answer the call just to tell him/her that.
Quickly dismiss calls with a text message; that way the person who’s
calling knows that he/she needs to wait. Instead of just swiping to
dismiss the call, swiping up while someone’s calling you gives you the
option to send the caller a text message.
Ice Cream Sandwich comes with a number of dismissal templates,
including “I’ll call you later” and “I’ll call you right back.” The
phone will then send the message of your choice to the caller. If you’d
like to customize your dismissal message, Ice Cream Sandwich lets you do
that, too, with the lowermost option, “Custom message.”
And, yeah. This nifty feature works not just for drivers. It also
works if you are in the middle of a meeting or in cases when you simply
don’t feel like answering calls.
Voice Input
Multitasking seems to be Ice Cream Sandwich’s big thing. Not only do
you have easy task switching, but you also save yourself time and your
life by being able to send a quick message to callers while you’re
driving.
Another feature of Ice Cream Sandwich is voice input. If you’re the
type of person who comes up with the best ideas while just talking
free-flow, Ice Cream Sandwich’s voice input engine is here to take
notes. Literally.
Tap the microphone button located at the bottom of the keyboard and
start talking. The voice input engine will transcribe your words onto
the screen for you. When you’re done talking, look over what the voice
input engine’s managed to transcribe of your words. Since not all things
are perfect, you can correct typos and misinterpreted words before
sending off your message.
Customize and Organize
What would Android be without the ability to customize? Just like in
Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich users will find that they can add widgets
to their homescreen for easy access to the data that apps can provide
and actually resize those widgets, having power over seeing more
information or less.
If you’ve got a ton of apps but you don’t want to do away with any of
them, you can de-clutter your homescreen with homescreen folders. If
you’re familiar with how iOS’s own homescreen management works, simply
long-tap and drag an application icon over to another icon. Release and
you’ll find that a folder has now been created on your homescreen.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 508x444px. |
By default, the folder is unnamed but you can easily rename it
yourself. How you group your applications into a folder is completely up
to you. You can group applications into a folder solely for
Productivity, or a folder for your Music. The power to customize and
organize is in your hands.
That’s not all; Ice Cream Sandwich lets you put speed dial shortcuts
of people you might frequently contact into folders or even put people
in the favorites tray. Talk about accessibility. Here’s how it’s
generally done:
- Open the App Drawer.
- Scroll to the Widgets section and find the widget icon for “Direct Dial.”
- Long-tap on the Direct Dial widget and drop it onto the homescreen.
- When the People app or Contacts list appears, select the contact that you wish to assign to the Direct Dial icon on your homescreen.
- Repeat the process as many times as there are contacts you’d like to assign Direct Dial to. To organize the Direct Dial shortcuts into a folder, simply drop a new Direct Dial shortcut onto an existing on.
Uniform Web Browsing Experience
Not so long ago, people had to wait until they got home to surf the
Internet. When the Internet became accessible to phones, it was a little
slow, clunky and a lot of pages weren’t optimized for mobile browsing
yet.
Now that a lot of websites have specific layouts tailored just for
people browsing on their mobile devices, users still have the problem of
not having the same browsing experience they have on their computers.
What about your bookmarks that you spent all night consolidating and
organizing? What if you didn’t get to bookmark the sites you needed but
you know you had them in your search history?
The good news for Chrome and Firefox users is that both browsers are
available for Ice Cream Sandwich. What that means for the people who
want to stay organized and who want to have everything within their
reach is that bookmarks, search history, and usernames and passwords can
be synced up. The mobile browsers even let you view the tabs that you
had open on your computer so you can pick up reading that article on
your phone where you had left off on the computer.
Control Network Data
Don’t get too distracted with surfing the Internet. Unless you’re
hooked up to a Wi-Fi connection, your hours surfing the web may not just
be burning your battery but also burning a hole in your wallet.
With how we can easily browse the Internet on our phones, it doesn’t
take a lot for us to go over our monthly limit. You might find yourself
paying a whole lot more than you should next time your bill comes in.
Ice Cream Sandwich helps you monitor your Internet usage. Found under Settings, the Usage
page provides you with data meters that you can adjust. If you have a
certain limit per month, simply adjust the meters to reflect it. You can
also adjust the warning meter to your desired warning threshold, say
half-way to your usage limit, so that Ice Cream Sandwich can notify you
when you’re almost at the end of your limit.
Android Beam
Near Field Communication (NFC) sounds a whole lot like something from
a science fiction flick, but it’s actually a new development in the
world of technology. A few years ago, NFC started figuring in pilot
studies, particularly in European countries where people only had to tap
their phone against a chip whenever they got on and off a train. Their
daily fares were then calculated and the railway sent monthly invoices.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 600x402px. |
Though that hasn’t quite clicked, NFC has other purposes such as
transferring information between two phones. Of course, the phone you
have and the phone you’d like to swap information with must be equipped
with NFC chips. Simply tap your phones together to activate NFC
functionality and swap data like YouTube videos, contact information,
and other bits of information.
Dismiss Notifications with a Tap of Your Finger
You might have seen the pull down-style notification tray on iOS but
Ice Cream Sandwich isn’t willing to just be a third-rate copycat. In
fact, it one ups the iOS’ notification tray by giving users the power to
literally flick away notifications you don’t care about.
If you don’t feel like addressing your notifications at this moment,
simply dismiss the ones that aren’t very important and save the ones
that matter for later.
You don’t even need to unlock your phone to be able to access your
notification tray either; you can just pull it down from the lockscreen.
Camera and Photo Gallery
If you’ve been hanging around the Android development community,
you’ve probably seen people try to port the Ice Cream Sandwich Camera
app to other phones that don’t seem to have Ice Cream Sandwich in their
future.
But, why import just the Camera app, you ask? That’s because the Ice
Cream Sandwich Gallery application has been revamped, displaying images
in a magazine-like layout with not a lot of ugly space between photos.
Tap on a photo and you’ll be able to edit it with all sorts of
filters and after-effects. For a stock camera app, the number of editing
options are pretty decent. You have access to options like highlights,
Shadows, Auto-fix, Cross-process, Posterize, Lomo, Documentary,
Vignette, Film Grain, and Fisheye. Not bad for a shutterbug on the go.
And, while taking screenshots is not exactly a function of the
phone’s camera, Ice Cream Sandwich was built with native capability for
taking screenshots of your phone without your having to install an
screengrabber app. All you need to is hold down the Power and Volume
Down buttons simultaneously. Your screenshots will be saved to your
phone, and you can view them from within the Gallery app, from where you
can share those screenshots with your friends.
Grab a Bite of ICS Today
If that list of features has got your mouth watering, wipe that drool
away and stop dawdling. We’ve given you the top 10 things you can do on
your Ice Cream Sandwich phone, so why hold back? If your phone’s got an
official update for the firmware, update now. If it doesn’t, take a
look around the Android development community. Chances are quite high
that you’ve got Ice Cream Sandwich for your phone in one way or another,
whether it’s a port of the actual stock firmware or a custom ROM based
on Ice Cream Sandwich.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar