Beginning with Android 4.0, hardware acceleration for all
windows is enabled by default if your application has set
either targetSdkVersion or minSdkVersion to “14" or higher.
Hardware acceleration generally results in smoother
animations, smoother scrolling, and overall better
performance and response to user interaction.
This is great news for users like me who couldn't stand Android's low-framerate animations. But what's sad is that it took them so long.
A number of my friends point to Android's laggy scrolling as the reason they wouldn't consider it over an iPhone. It'll be interesting to see if the hardware acceleration fixes this defect.
I've never noticed laggy scrolling and I don't even have a current gen phone (Droid X). Perhaps your friends have other reasons for not considering it...
Edit: Maybe because I've always used launcher pro?
Even with Launcher Pro, other parts of the OS can be laggy. (Though Launcher Pro is amazing.) But I thing the more accurate term would be choppy. You don't notice it that much until you use another platform for a small amount of time. Then going back it is very noticable.
Gingerbread fixes some of the "lag" issues with the partly GPU accelerated UI, mostly noticeable in the notifications pull-down menu.
Opera Mobile (GPU accelerated), with a decent launcher, memory optimizations (V6 Supercharger, or a good Autokiller config), and Android will perform just as good as any other mobile OS. Unfortunately to get great performance Android needs to be rooted.
That is it. I find my android phone animation perfectly acceptable until I tried an iPhone. Even a Windows Phone 7 feels better. I really hope android 4 address this problem.
Developers can now build or extend their own VPN solutions on the platform using a new VPN API and underlying secure credential storage. With user permission, applications can configure addresses and routing rules, process outgoing and incoming packets, and establish secure tunnels to a remote server. Enterprises can also take advantage of a standard VPN client built into the platform that provides access to L2TP and IPSec protocols.
http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-4.0-highlights.html
Does that mean we'll get a Cisco VPN client? That will be a killer app.
Probably, but will enterprises ever allow devices that don't have remote-wipe? (You can pretend to have remote wipe with Android, but backup software is very easy to write and have run every night, and good luck remotely wiping my S3 space. There is even software that will copy your entire flash image to S3 or Dropbox at timed intervals. Not compatible with "we don't trust our employees".)
Google already provides remote wipe and other domain management with the Google Apps Device Policy app. Domain owners can require users that want to link an account to their phone to accept the device policy, which can include remote wipe permission, remote lock, etc.
Remote wipe is starting to appear on Android devices. Check the Samsung Stratosphere that was released this week. It also has Cisco's SSL VPN client on it.
That funny word "enterprise" to me means that in fact the employee is not trusted so here's the device that's been chosen for you and your app market has been provided by the IT staff. If you need assistance, contact the help desk but be forewarned they they are fully engaged supporting Windows 95 and NT because the budgeteers have decided IS is a scary cost center.
Remote wipe has been available for ages - there are at least five apps from well-established companies that offer it. The latest was Norton iirc. Samsung phones come with it by default, you just have to enable it (samsungdive.com)
This actually sounds like something Cisco would integrate into the Cius and any other Android devices they make. Though the Cius is built on 2.3 and a lot of effort would probably need to go into migrating to 4.0 (even to get to 3).
The "unlock via face recognition" feature looks cool. But I guess someone can just take a picture of your face and show the picture to the phone to unlock it. Oh well, it seemed cool for a few minutes :)
When I saw them unveil Face Unlock, and then have the demo fail on stage, I immediately wondered why they were even bothering with such a gimmicky feature... and your 'photo imposter' scenario is realer than most people believe [1].
[1] PDF: Paper by Nguyen Minh Duc and Bui Quang Minh from Bach Khoa Internetwork Security Center/Hanoi University of Technology
Security vulnerabilities aside, I just don't see people gravitating towards this.
Pick up phone, hold it out at arm's length in front of you. Hold it real still. Now wait. Bloop bleep boop now it's unlocked!
Compare with:
Pick up phone, swipe your unlock gesture. Hurray!
For something the user is doing constantly, many times, every single... I just don't see why anyone would pick the more uselessly time-consuming (and more effort required) option.
I think it could be useful if the camera has a zero shutter lag as it is in the nexus. A scenario coming to my mind is maybe hands-free interaction with voice commands while driving. Anyway, it don't think locking a phone has a security connotation here, but it is a way to avoid any accidental launch of application/typing.
Lock the phone and carefully look at the screen from a few different angles. Chances are that you can clearly make out the greasy trail of the unlock pattern. I switched back to a PIN code when I noticed this.
It's a step above a pattern/PIN lock; with a minimum drop in convenience. No smudge trails left on the screen, can't be easily guessed, and you have to know who the owner is before you can unlock it. Not as secure as, say, a fingerprint scanner, but it's also easy to implement on existing devices.
i think the parent was talking about the security implications of having your unlock pattern show up on the screen. it's entirely possible to not touch the screen enough after unlocking to wipe out your pattern.
No feature is perfect. This still protects against data theft or prying eyes if you lose your phone, my primary concern.
Those finger-swipe locks that people seem to be so fond of on my University campus are less secure than decent facial recognition software IMO. Hypothetically I could find a phone left behind in the library and see their passcode pretty clearly in their finger smudges on the screen. Do you remember to wipe your screen clean every time?
Facial recognition will not deter someone who is deliberately targeting you, no. Maybe some combination of facial recognition AND numeric-passcode would be more suitable.
I am wondering how this works in low light situations..
Also i guess the "pattern to unlock" works faster, more reliable and is just as unsafe... Although it's easier to guess the finger "smears" on the display then getting hold of a picture of a phones owner..
One can still blame Google for choosing to use a flawed technology.
If they chose ROT13 for encrypting user data, would you say "It's a limitation/drawback of ROT13. I would not consider it as Google's fault to use it"?
If Android Keeps going this way I might do more Android Development in the future, IMO by version 5, android will have an mature API - not that now it doesn't this is jut my opinion. As an Apple fan boy is nice to see that iOS is getting some healthy competition - in the end both platforms will win if the competition is High.
My Context:
I only did iOS development and a little Android. I love apple technology because works so well and is so well integrated mainly with their products.
Google really needs to provide an action bar implementation in the compatibility package (for 2.3 and lower) if they want developers to port apps over to ICS.
Audio performance is still dismal. I had really hoped that Android would catch up with iOS in the audio latency department with this release, but my tests so far don't indicate much attention on this deficit yet. A pity, Android tablets would make good synthesizers too ..
I've been on the Android audio latency trail since 2009, and recently spoke to some platform developers who've hinted that something is finally on the horizon. I'm too tired of the situation to be blindly optimistic about it, but maybe just maybe...
It really depends what it gives us. For synthesis what you want is to be able to stream bytes to audio out. You can currently do this with AudioTrack but it goes through IPC and is generally slow. Personally I'd call that a use case for "streaming multimedia" but who knows what it will actually cover.
Okay, tried it. Very nice app, wonderful features - but the latency is terrible. I hope we see some improvements in this regard, otherwise iOS will always rule this realm.
Doesn't look like there's a way to simulate two NFC devices with android beam, which is a bit of a bummer, Android Beam support fits the intended use case of my iPhone app I'm about to port to Android (http://convoyapp.net) but as an independent developer I've already spent enough money on gadgets, can't afford to buy TWO NFC enabled ICS devices for testing purposes.
On that note, is there any service that lets you hire devices for dev/testing purposes? Would be great to get access to a lab with 20 different Android devices (for debugging obscure device specific bugs/screen size differences) along with all ipads, iphones, iPod touches and some WP7 devices.
I can't envisage it being released before the first ICS phones hit the market (for relatively obvious reasons), and can easily imagine it taking at least a month from then.
Has anyone been able to successfully launch a 4.0 AVD image in the emu? I keep trying, but all I get is the boot anim. I also noticed that the arm image is updated to v7a.. :/
