Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulett, and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting
Speaker 1: across me as always his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland, I
Speaker 1: just got parole. I'm just twenty five years old. I'm
Speaker 1: your ice cream man, so you better look out for me. Uh.
Speaker 1: That didn't sound like a scooter crunch to me. No,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk today about ice cream sandwiches, but not
Speaker 1: the tasty, chilly treat that can give you an ice
Speaker 1: cream headache. Oh no, this can give you a headache
Speaker 1: of a totally different nature. That's just that's just guess
Speaker 1: work by me. I was actually used it yet. Um.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking about the latest build as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast, the latest build of Andrewid's mobile
Speaker 1: or Androids operating system. It is a mobile operating system. Uh,
Speaker 1: it would officially be Android four point Oh yes, ice
Speaker 1: cream sandwich. Yeah. If you are not familiar with the
Speaker 1: Android operating system, this is, of course the smartphone and
Speaker 1: tablet operating system that Google produces. Uh and ever since
Speaker 1: they got out of alpha and beta, they've named their
Speaker 1: various builds after tasty desserts. So we had cupcake, doughnut, Claire, froyo, gingerbread,
Speaker 1: and honeycomb up to now honey Yeah, fantastic. So the
Speaker 1: nice neat thing about ice cream sandwich to me or
Speaker 1: what I think? It's kind of interesting is that? Okay?
Speaker 1: You you remember when Honeycomb debuted, right, and there was
Speaker 1: some excitement, but there was also some grousing because Google
Speaker 1: already has a bit of a black eye about all
Speaker 1: the different versions of Android that are out on the market, right, yeah, there, Well,
Speaker 1: it depends on what phone that you have, too, because
Speaker 1: some of them, uh is is it easy to find
Speaker 1: a good deal on an Android phone? But you'll find
Speaker 1: out in a lot of cases that you are one
Speaker 1: or more versions of the operating system behind the cutting edge. Um,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people were finding uh, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I got Android and it turns out that it's not
Speaker 1: as the phone isn't as robust and can't handle as
Speaker 1: advanced in operating system. So people are out there with
Speaker 1: a variety of different kinds of phones UH running a
Speaker 1: variety of different operating versions of the Android operating system.
Speaker 1: So like this, this is one of the things that
Speaker 1: really differentiates Android from iOS and Apple's approach because Apple
Speaker 1: is in charge of of UH creating the hardware and
Speaker 1: the software. So it's a marriage between hardware and software
Speaker 1: where the hardware is going to support the software because
Speaker 1: it was designed to do so from the ground up,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. The software is designed to work on
Speaker 1: that hard to to optimize for that hardware. So Apple
Speaker 1: in a way, you know their system. It means that
Speaker 1: you don't have as much choice. Really, you have the
Speaker 1: latest iPhone that you can purchase, or you can purchase
Speaker 1: an iPhone that's usually a generation or maybe two generations older.
Speaker 1: But but they're all iPhones. You know, it's all gonna
Speaker 1: have the form factor that is common across that generation
Speaker 1: of hardware. You know you're not gonna find any variation
Speaker 1: beyond that. But but it does mean that and you
Speaker 1: know you're less likely to be outpaced by the operating
Speaker 1: system at least significantly. I mean, older versions of the
Speaker 1: iPhone are not able to run the current version of iOS.
Speaker 1: But because contracts come up and usually two years in
Speaker 1: the United States, the think thinking processes. Well, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna be you know, left behind for very long because
Speaker 1: once your contracts up, then you can upgrade to the
Speaker 1: latest hand set and you'll be able to use the
Speaker 1: latest operating system. Google it's different because Google does not
Speaker 1: create right now, it's own hardware. It even though there
Speaker 1: is the the possibility that Google will purchase Motorola Mobility
Speaker 1: and so maybe in the future we will see that happen.
Speaker 1: Right now, that's not the way it works. The way
Speaker 1: it works is that various handset manufacturers across multiple countries
Speaker 1: and carriers are creating devices that run Android. So some
Speaker 1: of those devices can run Android up to a certain point,
Speaker 1: but beyond that they aren't capable of running Android because
Speaker 1: the operating systems resource demands are greater than what the
Speaker 1: hardware can provide. So, for example, some of the earliest
Speaker 1: Android phones that came out had an upper limit of
Speaker 1: Android one point six. They couldn't go beyond that. Now
Speaker 1: we're talking about Android four in this podcast, so you
Speaker 1: can see that you would be left far behind. So
Speaker 1: because multiple manufacturers are making these handsets, they're coming out
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, an iPhone a new iPhone
Speaker 1: comes out in general between twelve and eighteen months as scene. Uh,
Speaker 1: a new Android phone comes out every couple of weeks, right,
Speaker 1: it seems like so well, especially right now as at
Speaker 1: the time we're recording this podcast, we've had some very
Speaker 1: high profile device is released in the last two weeks. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in that case, you could go out purchase your
Speaker 1: brand new Google phone with it's with the highest running
Speaker 1: operating system that you can get at on that phone
Speaker 1: at that time, and then two weeks later you can
Speaker 1: find out that there's a new phone that's just been
Speaker 1: released that even makes the one you just purchased. Look. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, well it may not look pathetic. That would
Speaker 1: be going too far, but it may Yeah, it may
Speaker 1: not have as it may not be as fully featured
Speaker 1: as the newest phone. So that can be very frustrating. Well,
Speaker 1: Google's have a lot of criticism directed to it because
Speaker 1: directed at it, I guess I should say that because
Speaker 1: it had, you know it, it had created this this
Speaker 1: operating system where there were so many different versions out
Speaker 1: there on the market. Not all of this is Google's fault.
Speaker 1: It that it created something that we call fragmentation, where
Speaker 1: you know, you could have three or four people all
Speaker 1: with Google devices, getting a room together and realize that
Speaker 1: no two of them are running the same version of
Speaker 1: the operating system. And then you get on top of that,
Speaker 1: you've got things like you've got the ability of carriers
Speaker 1: to overlay their own um you user interface on top
Speaker 1: of the Android operating system, and it makes the fragmentation
Speaker 1: even greater. Well, then when Google released Honeycomb, which was
Speaker 1: a tablet operating system, it was designed optimized for tablets,
Speaker 1: not for smartphones, they got even more criticism because now
Speaker 1: you have a smartphone operating system and a tablet operating system,
Speaker 1: both of which Android. Yeah, so now the fragmentation is
Speaker 1: even worse. Well, ice Cream Sandwich moves to help resolve that,
Speaker 1: and that ice Cream Sandwich is bringing together the operating
Speaker 1: system of the tablet and the smartphone. They ideally the
Speaker 1: ice Cream Sandwich operating system build of Android will equally
Speaker 1: well on tablets and smartphones and we will start to
Speaker 1: to have a resolution of this fragmentation. And just in
Speaker 1: case you guys are curious, yeah, there are Android tablets
Speaker 1: that are on the market that actually run older versions
Speaker 1: of the Android operating system, versions older than than Honeycomb.
Speaker 1: So there are some versions out there where uh, they're
Speaker 1: running the smartphone operating system on a tablet and people
Speaker 1: were complaining about it. They said, you know, this really
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like a tablet operating system, and that was
Speaker 1: that's why Honeycomb was, you know, Google's answer to that. So, well,
Speaker 1: this is the optimized one. And now ice Cream Sandwich
Speaker 1: is taking everything they've learned from designing smartphone operating systems
Speaker 1: and tablet operating systems and combining it into a single package.
Speaker 1: So in that way, it's similar to Apple's approach with
Speaker 1: iOS UM and in another comparison to iOS and I
Speaker 1: know that I've well, I've read criticism lately about how
Speaker 1: uh Android stands alone and shouldn't necessarily be compared to iOS.
Speaker 1: But it's it's inevitable that it would draw these comparisons
Speaker 1: because they are the two leading operating systems for smartphones
Speaker 1: and tablets at the moment um. Uh. They they have
Speaker 1: said to that UM ice Cream Sandwich is designed to
Speaker 1: be more user friendly, uh and easier for people who
Speaker 1: are not familiar with smartphone and tablet operating systems to
Speaker 1: get in. UM. You know, one of the the strong
Speaker 1: points of Android is that it is more open and
Speaker 1: it has a lot of advanced features that UM the
Speaker 1: iOS UH doesn't have or didn't have up until iOS five. UM.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, UH, some people have criticized
Speaker 1: it for being so complex that newbies can't jump in
Speaker 1: and use it. UH ice cream sandwich is supposed to
Speaker 1: uh to help with that. UM. One of the features
Speaker 1: I I think that people will really like, especially new people,
Speaker 1: as the face recognition for the unlocking of the phone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of cool. The idea here is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you face unlock, you hold your phone up to your
Speaker 1: face and they're, you know, assuming that your phone has
Speaker 1: a front facing camera, which the the Google Nexus, which
Speaker 1: is the what they're talking there. That was the phone
Speaker 1: they featured, uh ice cream sandwich. When when Google was
Speaker 1: actually talking about ice cream sandwich, that was the phone
Speaker 1: they were using. Was Uh, it's a Samsung phone, as
Speaker 1: I recall, and UM, so they would it has a
Speaker 1: front facing camera. You hold it up to your face
Speaker 1: and assuming that you're in a well lit area where
Speaker 1: the camera can actually detect the contours of your face,
Speaker 1: it will unlock your phone. Once the facial recognition software
Speaker 1: verifies that it's you. Now. This does raise some questions, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like could you fool the facial recognition software by holding
Speaker 1: up a picture of someone? And like the person who
Speaker 1: owns that phone, if you hold up a picture of
Speaker 1: that person to the camera on the phone, would the
Speaker 1: picture be enough to fool the facial recognition software, because
Speaker 1: we have seen that happen in other devices that have
Speaker 1: facial recognition software. I rememb ended specifically of some vending
Speaker 1: machines in Japan that sold cigarettes, and the cigarettes, you know,
Speaker 1: there's an age limit you have to be a certain
Speaker 1: age in order to purchase cigarettes legally and so, but
Speaker 1: they found and they, in order to get around that,
Speaker 1: you know, have so that kids would not just walk
Speaker 1: up to the cigarette machine and buy cigarettes, they included
Speaker 1: a camera that would use some facial recognition software not
Speaker 1: to identify someone, but to determine if that person was
Speaker 1: old enough, just looking for specific kind of features and saying,
Speaker 1: all right, well, this is someone who is clearly has
Speaker 1: some years under their belt, so they can smoke if
Speaker 1: they want to. Don't don't smoke kids anyway. Uh. They
Speaker 1: it was discovered that if you just took a picture
Speaker 1: of an old person held the picture up to the camera.
Speaker 1: It would fool the camera and you could purchase as
Speaker 1: many you know, smokes as you wanted. Kids don't smoke, don't,
Speaker 1: don't do it anyway, So the question is, could the
Speaker 1: facial recognition software on this this Google device be fooled
Speaker 1: by a picture? Also, what what if? What if you?
Speaker 1: What if you have an identical twin? Could the identical
Speaker 1: twin pick up your phone and then unlock it using
Speaker 1: his or her own face? Also, for those of us
Speaker 1: with zz top like facial hair, what happens if we shave?
Speaker 1: Are we no longer able to access our phone? Does
Speaker 1: it say I don't recognize you, go away for six
Speaker 1: months and come back and try again. Well, he's got
Speaker 1: legs and he knows how to use them. Nice. But
Speaker 1: but even even if that does happen, even if it
Speaker 1: gets to a point where let's say it's too dark,
Speaker 1: just a simple scenario, it's too dark for it to work,
Speaker 1: you can still unlock your phone using one of the
Speaker 1: more traditional ways, like the finger swipe type stuff where
Speaker 1: you have to draw a pattern or whatever. You can
Speaker 1: still do that. So it's not like you're going to
Speaker 1: be bricked out of your phone because you ended up,
Speaker 1: you know, changing your face around. I remember my need
Speaker 1: of that Muppet machine that would you were to pull
Speaker 1: you pull the nose off and put on another one.
Speaker 1: You know, you can actually do that. At the Center
Speaker 1: for Puppetry Arts, they have a puppet thing where you
Speaker 1: can change out eyes and noses and mouths. It's awesome. So,
Speaker 1: um yeah, that's a pretty cool feature. The facial recognition.
Speaker 1: I agree. Also, voice recognition technology has become really important
Speaker 1: with Google. Now. It's interesting because this this this leads
Speaker 1: to comparisons with Apple's Siri and Siri. And when I
Speaker 1: say Apple's Sirie, Apple actually purchased the company that created Siri,
Speaker 1: but you know they're incorporating it into iOS um Now.
Speaker 1: Siri is has got a sense of humor and a
Speaker 1: personality sort of. I mean, it's artificial, but it's there.
Speaker 1: It's been programmed in minds, artificial to your your personalities, artificial.
Speaker 1: I felt I thought it was felt a little plastic,
Speaker 1: but uh, they the Google Voice version. There are ways
Speaker 1: where you can operate your phone through using just voice commands,
Speaker 1: just like you could with Siri. But there's not that
Speaker 1: sort of personality that quirky since there and it's not
Speaker 1: as it's not as deeply integrated as it is with
Speaker 1: Apple's product, but you can do a lot of that
Speaker 1: stuff on your Google phone. One of the things I
Speaker 1: thought was kind of cool though, is that with Android
Speaker 1: ice Cream it has real time speech to text UH recognition,
Speaker 1: So if you hold up the phone and you're talking
Speaker 1: into it, you'll see your your words start to appear
Speaker 1: on the screen as you're talking. Now, with older versions
Speaker 1: of Android, what would happen is you would you would
Speaker 1: activate your phone, you turn on the little microphone icon,
Speaker 1: and you would speak into your phone. You would stop speaking,
Speaker 1: you would get a little loading page as it was
Speaker 1: sending the data to the cloud to be analyzed. The
Speaker 1: cloud would send the data back down and then you
Speaker 1: would see the result and it would be whatever you
Speaker 1: said in full. So if you're dictating a fairly long email,
Speaker 1: then you're not going to get a chance to actually
Speaker 1: see what's coming up until you're done. Now, with ice
Speaker 1: Cream Sandwich, what's doing is it's doing real time streaming,
Speaker 1: so it's streaming the data up as it's receiving it,
Speaker 1: hitting the cloud, analyzing it, and sending it back down
Speaker 1: while you're still talking. So you could be dictating a
Speaker 1: very long email and you're gonna start seeing it appear
Speaker 1: after you start talking. Now, that might actually be distracting
Speaker 1: for someone, but it's also a way to say like
Speaker 1: you can review what you're saying immediately. They also highlight
Speaker 1: words or underlining words that uh that have a lot
Speaker 1: of hominems, especially with depending upon the way you speak.
Speaker 1: So if I say a word and uh, and you
Speaker 1: know it's the way I say that word, maybe I
Speaker 1: get a little mush mouth syndrome going or something, but
Speaker 1: I say the word in such a way that sounds
Speaker 1: like another word. If Google is not sure of the
Speaker 1: word you said based upon its contact and your pronunciation,
Speaker 1: you'll get this little underline under it, and if you
Speaker 1: click on the word, it'll give you multiple words to
Speaker 1: choose from that are hominems of whatever it was you said,
Speaker 1: so you can pick the correct word for that particular context.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of cool that, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: just going to put in one word when you said
Speaker 1: something else. Oh, they're they're Jonathan. Yeah there you go. No, No,
Speaker 1: they're Jonathan. There their castle. Uh. So you don't get
Speaker 1: that because you still haven't seen that movie. Um, but Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that was one of the features I thought
Speaker 1: was really cool. The facial recognition was neat, the voice
Speaker 1: recognitions neat. Uh. There's a lot of other things that
Speaker 1: they've they've included with this update to the operating system.
Speaker 1: The camera now has some added functionality. Yeah, that you
Speaker 1: can you can edit a lot. You have a lot
Speaker 1: more capacity to edit photos, and you can edit stuff
Speaker 1: like the simple things like removing red eye and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff and cropping photos. But you can also
Speaker 1: do like the hipster layers where you make things look
Speaker 1: posters and stuff and yeah, you're so hip. Apparently Jonathan
Speaker 1: doesn't like that. But you can also do panoramic shots
Speaker 1: where you hold the camera up and you start taking
Speaker 1: a photo and you just you pan to the left
Speaker 1: or to the right, or even I guess across the
Speaker 1: sky if you wanted to, and you you wait until
Speaker 1: you get all the way to where you want to end,
Speaker 1: and then what will happen is that the ice cream
Speaker 1: sandwich has software in it that will allow it to
Speaker 1: stitch together all the various pictures that you've just taken
Speaker 1: by slowly panning. You don't have to do anything the
Speaker 1: camera's doing at all. Uh, and it will stitch it
Speaker 1: together into a panoramic photo. That's pretty cool. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat. And also it has the features that
Speaker 1: we've come to expect with a lot of the most
Speaker 1: recent digital cameras and smartphones, like tap to focus. If
Speaker 1: you've gotten multiple, uh, multiple things in a frame, you
Speaker 1: can tap one of them to to tell the camera
Speaker 1: this is what I actually want to take a picture of.
Speaker 1: This Their stuff is kind of background and that's helpful,
Speaker 1: and of course like digital zoom and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Um oh, and apparently the shutter speed is there's like
Speaker 1: no delay or very little lag between when you hit
Speaker 1: the camera and when the photos taken, which is that's
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. Yeah, I have I don't know, have you
Speaker 1: ever used a phone that had a camera where there
Speaker 1: was like a noticeable delay from when you tried to
Speaker 1: take a picture to when the picture was taken. On
Speaker 1: my phone, it takes about a second, and that can
Speaker 1: be that can be enough for it to mess you up,
Speaker 1: but it's enough. It's long enough so that you can
Speaker 1: miss a moment you were trying to capture, or more frequently,
Speaker 1: in my case, i'll take a photo think that the
Speaker 1: photo has been taken, start to move the camera and
Speaker 1: that's when the camera takes And that's so I mean,
Speaker 1: I I'm a victim of my own impatience there. But
Speaker 1: this is uh with ice cream sandwich, they've really optimized
Speaker 1: the camera software so that it'll take that photo much
Speaker 1: more quickly. Now, some of that's also going to depend
Speaker 1: on the hardware. And again we said Android can be
Speaker 1: used across multiple kinds of hardware. So sometimes you'll you'll
Speaker 1: come across an Android handset that might take phenomenal photos,
Speaker 1: and you might come up with another one where the
Speaker 1: photos just look grainy and just there's the low resolution
Speaker 1: where they just don't they just don't look good. And
Speaker 1: some of that is due to the hardware limitations. So
Speaker 1: even though the software supports it, unless the hardware is comparable,
Speaker 1: you could still have a less than ideal experience. Uh
Speaker 1: So some other stuff that they've included an ice cream sandwich,
Speaker 1: there's anything else in particular you want to talk about.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna start hitting some of the other features,
Speaker 1: but if there's one or two that you really like,
Speaker 1: we can focus on those. I see what you did there. Um,
Speaker 1: I think one of the ones that I've seen most
Speaker 1: people interested in is Android Beam. Ah yeah, beam is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah, Now, I mean immediately when I saw
Speaker 1: that basically, Android Beam gives you the ability to um
Speaker 1: uh give people information from your phone when it's in
Speaker 1: proximity to another one. And the the demo I saw,
Speaker 1: they actually had the two phones touch, yeah, which reminds
Speaker 1: me of Bump. Yeah. It also reminded me of squirting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the old the old Microsoft Zoom. So so you you
Speaker 1: might say, well that, you know, we've had that for
Speaker 1: a while, you know, that's that's I hear that on
Speaker 1: from both sides when somebody else introduces a feature, Oh,
Speaker 1: you know a sirie. Oh Android, We the Android people
Speaker 1: have had that for years, cut and paste. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: but an Android Beam. You know, I thought of Bump
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, you know that's not something. In fact,
Speaker 1: Bump is you know, cross platform. Yeah, however, this is
Speaker 1: this is more than just that. Though. You can transfer
Speaker 1: all kinds of files um with Android Beam, and they've
Speaker 1: built it into the API so that developers can create
Speaker 1: applications that take advantage of this. So here here's some
Speaker 1: examples that you could use this this technology. Let's say,
Speaker 1: all right, basic example, I I am listening to a
Speaker 1: song on on a Pandora or something like that, and
Speaker 1: the Pandora's built in the API where I can actually
Speaker 1: share my playlist with someone else or my station with
Speaker 1: someone else. And Chris has the same kind of He
Speaker 1: has a phone that also has this capability. Right now,
Speaker 1: by the way, Google Nexus is the only phone that
Speaker 1: can do this because you have to have near field
Speaker 1: communication yeah built into it, and yeah and yeah. But
Speaker 1: as we see more NFC phones come out from using Android,
Speaker 1: then I'm sure we'll see this used in various handsets,
Speaker 1: and hopefully it will be completely compatible across all handsets,
Speaker 1: so that way I'm not limited to just other people
Speaker 1: who own the same type of phone that I do. Alright,
Speaker 1: so let's say that I've got this song or this
Speaker 1: playlist playing and I want to share it with Chris,
Speaker 1: and I hold it up to his phone, and then
Speaker 1: now his his Pandora has access to the same playlist
Speaker 1: the same station that I have created. That's a simple application.
Speaker 1: Or the one that I saw in the demo was
Speaker 1: that I was, you know, someone's watching a YouTube video,
Speaker 1: they hold their phone up to someone else's phone, and
Speaker 1: now the second phone picks up and and is able
Speaker 1: to watch that YouTube video at the same time. But
Speaker 1: let's let's say let's put it into a game and
Speaker 1: say that you've got a game on your on your
Speaker 1: your phone. That is, let's say it's a role playing game,
Speaker 1: and it's a role playing game where it's essentially a
Speaker 1: massively multiplayer role playing game, but you know, with limited
Speaker 1: interaction with other characters. And then I hold up my
Speaker 1: phone to your phone, and our characters meet and exchange
Speaker 1: stuff so that we each of our characters comes out
Speaker 1: stronger than they were before. And that that's kind of
Speaker 1: a cool little feature that you could you could build
Speaker 1: into a game using this um this this technology. Now
Speaker 1: there's other stuff too. You know, you can transfer notes
Speaker 1: and you can do all sorts of things. It's it's
Speaker 1: a neat way of being able to to manage data
Speaker 1: without having to set up an email or or some
Speaker 1: sort of foul sharing service. Um it makes it really
Speaker 1: quick and simple. And because it's using near field communication,
Speaker 1: it's it's secure in the sense that you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about you know, you're transferring this across a
Speaker 1: public WiFi hotspot or something. It's you know, unless someone's
Speaker 1: right up on you, some way of being able to
Speaker 1: read your your communication, then you're you're pretty much okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody's running uh to you trying to touch your phone
Speaker 1: with theirs. That maybe a sign that something is wrong.
Speaker 1: It's an indicator that there you may need to pay
Speaker 1: attention to what's going on around you. I'm on base,
Speaker 1: you can't tag me. Uh so yeah, that that was
Speaker 1: another feature that that I've seen a lot of people
Speaker 1: talking about. Um, let's see, let's see, there's the go ahead.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say. The app management, too, is supposed
Speaker 1: to be improved. Um. One of the concerns that a
Speaker 1: lot of Android users have is that, uh that they
Speaker 1: have little knowledge of all the stuff that's running on
Speaker 1: their phone, and they all of a sudden they have
Speaker 1: no battery because they have sixty three apps running and
Speaker 1: you know, I don't need that thing open. Uh why
Speaker 1: is it still running? I told it to close? Um,
Speaker 1: And I find that kind of frustrating with my Android.
Speaker 1: Have you have you seen some of the screens for
Speaker 1: the data management? No? I actually haven't they really get
Speaker 1: they drill down, because what will happen is let's say
Speaker 1: that let's say that you are just curious to see
Speaker 1: how you um, how you've been using, like how much
Speaker 1: data you've been using. That that's a concern too, because
Speaker 1: a lot of plans have a limit on how much
Speaker 1: data you can use per month, but not every phone
Speaker 1: is uh not every upbrating system makes it easy to
Speaker 1: determine how much data you're using. Well, ice Cream Sandwich
Speaker 1: has it built in where you can go into a
Speaker 1: data management app and take a look and you'll see
Speaker 1: how much data you've used up to that point and end.
Speaker 1: It will even break it down and show you which
Speaker 1: apps are using the most data and when. I would
Speaker 1: really like to have that option right now. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it does it as line graphs, it does as pie charts.
Speaker 1: It gives you really a good idea of where your
Speaker 1: data usage is coming from. And if you want, you
Speaker 1: know a lot of if you have a cap on
Speaker 1: your data limit and you don't want to go over it,
Speaker 1: you can actually set a hard stop on your data
Speaker 1: usage and when your data usage hits that, that's it.
Speaker 1: Your phone won't let you use data unless you override
Speaker 1: the limit you've set, So that way you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about it. Was getting close to the end
Speaker 1: of the month and suddenly your phone tells you know,
Speaker 1: you don't want to do this because if you do,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be paying a truckload of money like an
Speaker 1: overage fees. So that's kind of cool. Yeah. Things that
Speaker 1: allow you to manage your apps better so that you
Speaker 1: you maximize your battery life and you you don't go
Speaker 1: over your data limit. Those are really thoughtful. Uh features.
Speaker 1: You want to know another small, small feature that that's
Speaker 1: related to that that I really like the idea of
Speaker 1: what's that I understand that with ice cream sandwich. If
Speaker 1: you have a device from a carrier that has bundled
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff on your phone that you
Speaker 1: don't want, that it will allow you to uninstall anything
Speaker 1: from your phone. See right now, unless I root my phone,
Speaker 1: I cannot remove three or four applications that I never
Speaker 1: use that my Uh they're on the provider put on
Speaker 1: there and I can't get off. I have the same
Speaker 1: I've got a few I've got a few apps that
Speaker 1: are on my phone that I never use, I don't
Speaker 1: imagine I will use, but I can't uninstall them unless
Speaker 1: I root my phone, and I don't do I. People
Speaker 1: often ask me why I don't root my phone because
Speaker 1: I'm a tech guy. I don't root my phone because
Speaker 1: I use my phone so frequently for so many things
Speaker 1: that I don't want to run into the situation where
Speaker 1: I have a fatal crash and I have to restart
Speaker 1: from factories, you know, go back to factory settings, and
Speaker 1: I don't want an instance where that happens and it
Speaker 1: throws me off. That's the problem is because I use
Speaker 1: my phone for everything. I mean, I use it for
Speaker 1: work stuff, and I use it for my own personal use.
Speaker 1: It is my personal phone, um, but I use it
Speaker 1: for I use it for everything, so I can't I
Speaker 1: don't want to take the risk of a rooting something
Speaker 1: and then and then having an app mucket up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I needed to work when I needed to
Speaker 1: work and not. Yes, so yeah. Another another thing that's
Speaker 1: interesting hardware buttons. They're gone, you know, instead of there's
Speaker 1: there's a little section at the very bottom of the
Speaker 1: screen when you're looking at by the way that the
Speaker 1: Google Nexus has an enormous screen. It's like four point
Speaker 1: six inches, um for for a smartphone, that's pretty big.
Speaker 1: But at the bottom of the screen you'll have a
Speaker 1: back button uh, and like a file button and the
Speaker 1: home button. Um, there's no more menu button uh down
Speaker 1: there as there were with older Android funds. And these
Speaker 1: are not actual button buttons. They're on the screen and
Speaker 1: when you get to certain views those just fade away
Speaker 1: as well. They are contextual buttons. Uh. So that's a
Speaker 1: little different. That's actually kind of neat because it gives
Speaker 1: you even more screen space and uh that makes apps,
Speaker 1: you know, more more useful. Um. And then there's some
Speaker 1: other basic housekeeping type stuff like folder creation, which is
Speaker 1: something that Apple folks have been using for a while now.
Speaker 1: But the way you create a folder in an Android
Speaker 1: ice cream phone is that you can drag a an
Speaker 1: icon of an app on top of another icon and
Speaker 1: let go, and it will automatically group those two icons
Speaker 1: together in a folder. And then you can name the
Speaker 1: folder whatever you want. So you can put all your
Speaker 1: social apps in one folder and you call it social
Speaker 1: and that way, you you know, you manage that you
Speaker 1: don't have a cluttered screen on your on your smartphone
Speaker 1: when you open it up. Um. So yeah, there's lots
Speaker 1: of other neat little features like that. I'm sure we're
Speaker 1: gonna learn more as we get closer. Oh. One of
Speaker 1: the most important things that I heard was that, um
Speaker 1: that apparently, ah, if your if your phone can run
Speaker 1: uh Android two point three, which is gingerbread, it will
Speaker 1: be able to run ice cream sandwich. That's what I understand.
Speaker 1: And so that ice cream sandwich will be released for
Speaker 1: all the phones that can run gingerbread. Uh. Although the
Speaker 1: schedule of that really state is is largely up to
Speaker 1: the actual carriers, So some of us may be waiting
Speaker 1: around this time next year for gingerbread. Finally, someone's looking
Speaker 1: at directly at me while well, other people have ice
Speaker 1: cream sandwich. Um. Well, hey, to be fair, I have
Speaker 1: not had gingerbread for very long and uh, and ice
Speaker 1: cream sandwich is now going to be the next new thing.
Speaker 1: And hopefully they will really roll this out. It's not
Speaker 1: just the carriers either, it's also the handset manufacturers. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of work that goes into rolling out the
Speaker 1: updates to the operating system. I can only hope that
Speaker 1: they will incorporate this as quickly as they can, because
Speaker 1: I would love to get my hands on some of
Speaker 1: these features. I mean a lot of the stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know that my hardware could support everything that
Speaker 1: ice Cream Sandwich promises, but I would at least like
Speaker 1: the chance to try it out. Yeah, I would too. Um,
Speaker 1: of course I need gingerbread first. Um. I thought of
Speaker 1: one other little thing I forgot to mention, which is
Speaker 1: not a huge deal for most people, but it's um
Speaker 1: it's nice. Uh. You can resize widgets now, so you know,
Speaker 1: you get a widget you put on your screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you which is great depending on you know, the
Speaker 1: size of screen you have. You might not have a
Speaker 1: Google Nexus which has that enormous screen, and you might
Speaker 1: want you know, well, I just need enough of this
Speaker 1: widget to show like a Gmail widget. You might want
Speaker 1: it to show just one email message at a time.
Speaker 1: And so you you can actually resize the wind does
Speaker 1: so it does that and you that frees up more
Speaker 1: desktop space or phone top space so that you can, said,
Speaker 1: you can put other apps up there. And you know
Speaker 1: that that that applies across to all the widgets. And
Speaker 1: this was kind of I think that was something that
Speaker 1: they carried over from Honeycomb, that you could do that
Speaker 1: on the Android tablets, but you couldn't do it on
Speaker 1: the smartphones. Until ice Cream Sandwich rolled around interesting or
Speaker 1: plopped around I guess ice cream sandwiches don't really roll.
Speaker 1: Not really depends on the shape. I guess if you
Speaker 1: get a round one, yeah, I've seen some round ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's promising though. The operating system I
Speaker 1: think is is really maturing with these with these new features,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I think this is definitely a
Speaker 1: step forward. And uh, it's probably not as much of
Speaker 1: a shot across the bow to i OS as it
Speaker 1: is too uh Microsoft and BlackBerry. Yeah, as far as
Speaker 1: keeping why even keep shooting BlackBerry? I mean they're sinking
Speaker 1: on their own well enough, shot themselves in the foot, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're plugging more holes in that boat. Then there's more
Speaker 1: holes than boat at this point. Maybe they'll turn it
Speaker 1: around though, like we said in our our Rim podcast,
Speaker 1: it may very well turn out that BlackBerry gets the
Speaker 1: last laugh. But right now, I just don't think that
Speaker 1: that's necessarily so when you go after I guess I
Speaker 1: guess what Google could go after is to try and
Speaker 1: get into the enterprise market plus, where BlackBerry really still
Speaker 1: is firmly entrenched. So if Google can do that now, granted,
Speaker 1: most of these uh, these these features that we've talked
Speaker 1: about are really aimed at consumers, and these are really
Speaker 1: consumer friendly features. But for example, the face face unlock
Speaker 1: is not going to work for enterprise because if it
Speaker 1: can be fooled and there's proprietary information on that phone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's what we call a bad thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, there, we'll we'll have to see. But uh,
Speaker 1: I am interested to see how this turns out. I mean,
Speaker 1: I am an Android phone user, so of course I'm
Speaker 1: I'm eager to get hold of this on one of
Speaker 1: my own devices, or maybe my next Android phone will
Speaker 1: just natively support it. It will still be a while.
Speaker 1: I'm under contract for another year, so it'll take a
Speaker 1: little bit before I upgrade. Yeah, your next phone will
Speaker 1: be running jelly Bean or whatever it is. It's going
Speaker 1: to be starting with K. Yeah, maybe we'll be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Koala custard with a K Kala custard
Speaker 1: now would be that I guess that would be an
Speaker 1: Uben two thing. Yeah, well closer to it. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Well that'll wrap up this discussion. Oh uh did you
Speaker 1: hear what their new type face is called? Al Right, everyone,
Speaker 1: that wraps up our discussion about Android. In your head,
Speaker 1: I scream sandwich. Um. I hope all of you enjoyed this.
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Speaker 1: email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot
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