Leaked images of Google’s upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich update to Android, announced in May at Google I/O, have surfaced on two different Android blogs, Android Police and RootZWiki. The images show a revamped interface which features transparency, an app shortcut button that looks to switch between multiple apps and a revamped notification bar.
The images show off Ice Cream Sandwich running on a Google Nexus S phone and show a kernel version number of 2.6. Google announced that it was coming back at Google I/O and that it was supposed to unify the tablet and phone OSs. This version has a build number of IRK36B.
In addition to a spiffed up notification bar and pulldown that seems to have been cleaned up significantly, with a large preview icon on the left, the new UI is largely dark and trimmed in light blue accents. This is a significant change to the light grey and dark grey of Gingergbread.
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Android Police says that their source tells them that there is also a newly designed launcher and app drawer, which are pictured, and that the camera has a panoramic mode. The Nexus S will definitely be getting the Ice Cream Sandwich update, although Google’s new rumored “Nexus Prime” phone will be getting it first.
The Ice Cream Sandwich update has been hotly anticipated since its announcement at Google I/O and its position as the first OS that Google hopes to roll out to all of its current devices makes it an important one in the fight to battle OS fragmentation across the Android family. We’re all big fans of the Nexus S here at TNW, so hopefully Ice Cream Sandwich will be coming to it after all, it looks great so far.
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