Nexus Prime vs iPhone 4S: Two Days till Samsung Reveals First Ice Cream Sandwich Powered Smartphone
With Samsung's "something big" unveiling just two days away and speculation regarding a new grudge match between the company's fabled Nexus Prime and Apple's iPhone 4S reaching boiling-point, the IBTimes gives you a full round-up of all the latest Nexus Prime rumours. Samsung

With the Android Ice Cream Sandwich mobile operating system soon to be announced, what are the key features likely to be? This is our rumour roundup.

Androsym reported that the OS will work a lot like Gingerbread but with "Glassy Menus" with more animations.

    • Works like Gingerbread, but with a major facelift.
    • Glassy looking Menus.
    • More animations. Much shinier, with more purple and blue than ever.
    • There's an App Drawer. Three default sections by name - Apps, Games and Widgets. The apps section will house all the apps, the games section will house all the games, and the widgets section will show you all those apps that have widgets. Neat. You can also create your own sections if you want. Talk about organisation. Also, I think of it as the old Symbian style folder structure done differently.
    • The Gmail app gets a facelift as well. If you have the phone in landscape mode, you get a preview pane, a la Outlook on Windows PCs.
    • New browser. The 4chan user says it is leaps and bounds better than the current one. The icon of the app has changed as well. The interface now resembles the tabbed style of Opera Mobile, says the user.

Sleetherz.com has reported: "We all already know that the next version of Android OS, the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, will roll out by the end of 2011. We all also know that it is a mixture of the latest tablet-optimized version of Android, the Android Honeycomb, and the latest smartphone-optimized version of Android, the Android Gingerbread."

They also suggest that the OS will be smartphone only with the Samsung Nexus Prime being the first to run the Android 4.0 system.

CNet reports that the Ice Cream Sandwich will incorporate a digital editing suite: If a number of uncovered camera icons are to be believed, the next build of Android could make it much easier to touch up photos. AndroidPolice, who initially discovered these icons, indicates that users will have the ability to perform standard editing techniques and apply effects to pictures without the need to download additional software.

Tech Radar has spoken out about some more of the features they expect: "Google's Mike Claren said, 'We want one OS that runs everywhere.'

"Smartphone users will also get an expanded multitasking tool, including a system manager that handles your open resources for you so you won't run out of memory or be prompted to quit an application on the tablet.

"Android 3.1 also means you can expand the size of a scrollable home screen widget, while existing scrollable widgets can also be upgraded by devs with a couple of lines of code."

EnGadget have stuck to a short explanation of the video in which a lucky guy who purchased a new phone that was installed with Ice Cream Sandwich: "We can see plenty of influence from both Gingerbread and Honeycomb here, as well as four shortcuts on the bottom (a definite bump from the two found on vanilla 2.3). There's a new Google Apps icon which opens up a tray containing a number of featured services put out by the search giant, and long-pressing the home button brings up a vertical Honeycomb-style multitasking menu. The notification bar, camera UI and other menus also have a much different look. Granted, all of this could just be a custom ROM built to emulate the latest Google dessert, so we can't be a full hundred percent certain that it's authentic. If it's not, at least we can give credit for it being incredibly elaborate. Enjoy the video and additional screenshot below."