Android 4.0 builds on the things people love most about Android -- easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing.

Focused on bringing the power of Android to the surface, Android 4.0 makes common actions more visible and lets users navigate with simple, intuitive gestures. Refined animations and feedback throughout the system make interactions engaging and interesting. An entirely new typeface optimized for high-resolution screens improves readability and brings a polished, modern feel to the user interface. Multitasking is a key strength of Android and it's made even easier and more visual on Android 4.0.

Rich and interactive notifications let users keep in constant touch with incoming messages, play music tracks, see real-time updates from apps, and much more.

New home screen folders offer a new way for users to group their apps and shortcuts logically, just by dragging one onto another. On smaller-screen devices, the home screen now includes a customizable favorites tray visible from all home screens.

Home screens in Android 4.0 are designed to be content-rich and customizable. Widgets are resizable, so users can expand them to show more content or shrink them to save space.

When an incoming call arrives, users can now quickly respond by text message, without needing to pick up the call or unlock the device.

Android 4.0 makes managing notifications, recent apps, and browser tabs even easier. Users can now dismiss individual notifications, apps from the Recent Apps list, and browser tabs with a simple swipe of a finger.

The soft keyboard in Android 4.0 makes text input even faster and more accurate. Spell-checker and word suggestion are improved through a new set of default dictionaries and more accurate heuristics for handling cases such as double-typed characters, skipped letters, and omitted spaces. Word suggestion is also improved and the suggestion strip is simplified to show only three words at a time.

Android 4.0 introduces a powerful voice input engine that offers a continuous "open microphone" experience and streaming voice recognition.

Mobile devices can make extensive use of network data for streaming content, synchronizing data, downloading apps, and more. To meet the needs of users with tiered or metered data plans, Android 4.0 adds new controls for managing network data usage. In the Settings app, colorful charts show the total data usage on each network type (mobile or Wi-Fi), as well as amount of data used by each running application.

Most important is a new explore-by-touch mode that lets users navigate without having to see the screen. Touching the screen once triggers audible feedback that identifies the UI component below; a second touch in the same component activates it with a full touch event. The new mode is especially important to support users on new devices that use virtual buttons in the System Bar, rather than dedicated hardware buttons or trackballs. Also, standard apps are updated to offer an improved accessibility experience. The Browser supports a script-based screen reader for reading favorite web content and navigating sites. For improved readability, users can also increase the default font size used across the system.

Designed for the way people live, Android 4.0 integrates rich social communication and sharing touchpoints across the system, making it easy to talk, email, text, and share.

The Camera app includes many new features that let users capture special moments with great photos and videos. After capturing images, they can edit and share them easily with friend.

When taking pictures, continuous focus, zero shutter lag exposure, and decreased shot-to-shot speed help capture clear, precise images, stabilized image zoom, built-in face detection, tap to focus. For capturing larger scenes, the Camera introduces a single-motion panorama mode.

The Gallery app now makes it easier to manage, show, and share photos and videos. For managing collections, a redesigned album layout shows many more albums and offers larger thumbnails.

Live Effects is a collection of graphical transformations that add interest and fun to videos captured in the Camera app.

Android has always been cloud-connected, letting users browse the web and sync photos, apps, games, email, and contacts . wherever they are and across all of their devices. Android 4.0 adds new browsing and email capabilities to let users take even more with them and keep communication organized.

For composing email, improved auto-completion of recipients helps with finding and adding frequent contacts more quickly. For easier input of frequent text, users can now create quick responses and store them in the app

Android is continously driving innovation forward, pushing the boundaries of communication and sharing with new capabilities and interactions. Face Unlock is a new screen-lock option that lets users unlock their devices with their faces. It takes advantage of the device front-facing camera and state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to register a face during setup and then to recognize it again when unlocking the device. Users just hold their devices in front of their faces to unlock, or use a backup PIN or pattern.

Support for Wi-Fi Direct lets users connect directly to nearby peer devices over Wi-Fi, for more reliable, higher-speed communication. No internet connection or tethering is needed. Through third-party apps, users can connect to compatible devices to take advantage of new features such as instant sharing of files, photos, or other media; streaming video or audio from another device; or connecting to compatible printers or other devices.

Android 4.0 also introduces built-in support for connecting to Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) devices. With support from third-party apps, users can connect to wireless medical devices and sensors in hospitals, fitness centers, homes, and elsewhere.

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