1.4.4. Android 4.0 through 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), released in 2011, merged Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) into one operating system for use on all Android devices. This allowed you to incorporate into your smartphone apps Honeycomb’s features that previously were available only on tablets—the “Holo” user interface, a new launcher (used to customize the device’s home screen and launch apps) and more—and easily scale your apps to work on different devices. Ice Cream Sandwich also added several APIs for improved communication between devices, accessibility for users with disabilities (e.g., vision impairments), social networking and more (Fig. 1.6). For a complete list of Android 4.0 APIs, see http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.0.html.

Fig. 1.6 | Some Android Ice Cream Sandwich developer features (http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.0.html).