With Google due to unwrap Ice Cream Sandwich in the coming months, we can expect to see all manner of leaked snapshots and all manner of in-the-wild style pics of the Google Nexus Prime, or the Nexus 3 or whatever it’ll be called (Nexus Trinity? Nexus Next?).
Screenshots leaked by Android Police appear to show the About menu of a Nexus S, showing off ‘IceCreamSandwich’ as the running version of Android. Note the lack of any number, no 2.4, no 4.0 or anything.
There also appears to be a new blue theme to everything, a la Honeycomb’s Tron stylings. The icons in the notification bar bear more of a resemblance to the Gingerbread ones, just with the lime green being ditched for a more electric blue shade.
It looks like the pic on the right is one showing the notification panel pulled all the way down, hence the T-Mobile label, what looks like a notification for news and an app notif/shortcut for Audio Manager Pro.
Joining these is another pair of shots leaked by RootzWiki, which also come with a list of spec from a “very reliable source”:
- Some features of ICS that we know (from our source and speculation):
- Blue Themed – Like our site (Change theme on bottom)
- Camera has built in panorama mode
- Will launch with Google Shopper and NFC Enabled devices will be able to utilize those features
- Gmail is all rethemed
- Will be available for the Nexus S
- Nexus Prime gets it first (expected) then other devices will follow after
- Not too many changes, just UI things, don’t think requirements are set too high for year old devices to run it
- The little icon in the bottom right, looks like a tray with multiple apps in it
- Google search bar embedded on very top like Honeycomb
- Apps/Widgets launcher a lot like Honeycomb
- This release is still very early, notice the theming of the power tray
Some of these are unsurprising; we’d expect Google Shopper to be integral to ICS, given that Google is busy testing out its Wallet service as we speak.
Nexus S availability is cool, but we understood that pretty much all current Android devices would be able to get ICS so again, not a shocker. Android Police also adds that ICS “Mostly UI changes – many older devices (< 1 year old) should be able to run it.” Nexus Prime seems to be all but confirmed as the name for the new Nexus device.
The built in panorama mode is interesting; the default camera app of most Android phones is simple enough but pretty uninspring. We wonder if any more camera features and functions will be added.
On RootzWiki’s pics, there’s that Honeycomb-style labelling for Apps and Widgets on the first pic and icon for what looks like Google Shopper on the second.
Another thing of note is that icon bottom right; it’s a cluster of icons for the calendar, Gmail and what could be a browser shortcut hiding in there.
We think that this could be a ‘recent tasks’ command that you can tap and get a quick list of all the apps and processes running.
Apart from this, there’s not much else to glean. There’s an awful lot of black bars everywhere, preventing us from having a proper look around. What’s there to hide? Something so earth-shatteringly awesome that RootzWiki’s source would be deep sixed by Google’s lawyers overnight? A picture of Andy Rubin in a state of undress perhaps?
Also, despite all the electric blue lovelyness, and that slightly different glass launcher at the bottom, it doesn’t look that different from Gingerbread. This has led to speculation that this could be a custom skin installed on a Gingerbread and is the work of trolls with too much time on their hands.
In a best-case scenario, we could be looking at very early version of ICS here. We remember the early shots of Android 2.3 which were blurry as hell and prompted some chin scratching. Turned out that the shots were probably genuine though, as they tally with what Gingerbread eventually turned out to be.
So what do you think? Genuine evidence of ICS in the wild or the work of successful trolls?
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