Ice Cream Sandwich

In screenshots, Android is starting to look pretty damn good. I think Apple actually took a few steps back because of all those “skeuomorphic” app designs, while Microsoft takes the opposite approach and pretty much forbids their developers to actually design their apps except within tight restrictions¹. Their design ideas seem to be a much more pragmatic balance between the two.

That said, it probably won’t matter. Google has proven time and time again with Android that they’re very much about show over substance with their OS. Did they fix the scrolling to be smoother? Do the design principles descend into every first-party app or just the simple ones? Did they somehow restrict the ability of carriers to tweak it to hell and gone? Only getting it in peoples’ hands will prove the answer.

Even if they did a good job here, did they also improve the battery life? Do users need to learn how the filesystem works? Perhaps most importantly, will more developers design first-class apps for the OS? Show versus substance has always been the issue with Android, but it’ll be a rude awakening for everyone if Google has beaten expectations. I hope they do. It would be good to see better choices out there.