Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich Firmware Download
Welcome to Android 4.0!
Android iv.0 delivers a refined, unified UI for phones and tablets and introduces innovative features for users and developers. This document provides a glimpse of the many new features and technologies that make Android 4.0 simple, beautiful, and across smart.
- Android 4.0 for Users
- Android 4.0 for Developers
Android 4.0 for Users
Simple, cute, across smart
Android 4.0 builds on the things people dearest most about Android — easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable domicile screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing.
Refined, evolved UI
Focused on bringing the ability of Android to the surface, Android 4.0 makes common actions more visible and lets users navigate with simple, intuitive gestures. Refined animations and feedback throughout the system make interactions engaging and interesting. An entirely new typeface optimized for high-resolution screens improves readability and brings a polished, modernistic experience to the user interface.
Virtual buttons in the System Bar let users navigate instantly to Back, Dwelling, and Recent Apps. The System Bar and virtual buttons are present across all apps, but can be dimmed by applications for full-screen viewing. Users can access each application'southward contextual options in the Action Bar, displayed at the pinnacle (and sometimes also at the bottom) of the screen.
Multitasking is a central strength of Android and it's made even easier and more visual on Android 4.0. The Recent Apps button lets users bound instantly from i task to another using the list in the Organisation Bar. The listing pops up to testify thumbnail images of apps used recently — borer a thumbnail switches to the app.
The Recent Apps list makes multitasking simple.
Jump to the photographic camera or see notifications without unlocking.
For incoming calls, yous can reply instantly by text.
Rich and interactive notifications let users keep in constant touch with incoming messages, play music tracks, see real-fourth dimension updates from apps, and much more than. On smaller-screen devices, notifications announced at the meridian of the screen, while on larger-screen devices they appear in the Organization Bar.
The All Apps launcher (left) and resizable widgets (right) give you apps and rich content from the home screen.
Domicile screen folders and favorites tray
New home screen folders offering a new fashion for users to grouping their apps and shortcuts logically, simply by dragging i onto some other. Also, in All Apps launcher, users can at present but drag an app to get data about it or immediately uninstall it, or disable a pre-installed app.
On smaller-screen devices, the home screen now includes a customizable favorites tray visible from all home screens. Users can drag apps, shortcuts, folders, and other priority items in or out of the favorites tray for instant admission from whatsoever home screen.
Resizable widgets
Home screens in Android 4.0 are designed to be content-rich and customizable. Users tin can do much more than than add shortcuts — they can embed live application content direct through interactive widgets. Widgets let users check email, flip through a calendar, play music, check social streams, and more — right from the abode screen, without having to launch apps. Widgets are resizable, and then users can aggrandize them to show more than content or shrink them to save infinite.
New lock screen actions
The lock screens now let users practice more without unlocking. From the slide lock screen, users can jump directly to the photographic camera for a motion picture or pull down the notifications window to cheque for messages. When listening to music, users can even manage music tracks and see album art.
Quick responses for incoming calls
When an incoming call arrives, users tin now chop-chop respond by text message, without needing to choice up the call or unlock the device. On the incoming call screen, users simply slide a command to see a list of text responses so tap to send and terminate the call. Users can add their own responses and manage the listing from the Settings app.
Swipe to dismiss notifications, tasks, and browser tabs
Android 4.0 makes managing notifications, recent apps, and browser tabs even easier. Users can now dismiss individual notifications, apps from the Contempo Apps list, and browser tabs with a unproblematic swipe of a finger.
A spell-checker lets you find errors and ready them faster.
A powerful vocalization input engine lets y'all dictate continously.
Improved text input and spell-checking
The soft keyboard in Android 4.0 makes text input even faster and more accurate. Error correction and word suggestion are improved through a new set of default dictionaries and more authentic heuristics for handling cases such as double-typed characters, skipped letters, and omitted spaces. Word suggestion is also improved and the suggestion strip is simplified to testify just iii words at a time.
To fix misspelled words more easily, Android 4.0 adds a spell-checker that locates and underlines errors and suggests replacement words. With 1 tap, users can cull from multiple spelling suggestions, delete a give-and-take, or add it to the dictionary. Users can even tap to run into replacement suggestions for words that are spelled correctly. For specialized features or additional languages, users can now download and install third-political party dictionaries, spell-checkers, and other text services.
Powerful voice input engine
Android 4.0 introduces a powerful new voice input engine that offers a continuous "open up microphone" experience and streaming voice recognition. The new voice input engine lets users dictate the text they want, for as long every bit they desire, using the language they desire. Users can speak continously for a prolonged time, even pausing for intervals if needed, and dictate punctuation to create right sentences. As the voice input engine enters text, it underlines possible dictation errors in gray. Subsequently dictating, users can tap the underlined words to rapidly replace them from a list of suggestions.
Information usage controls allow you monitor total usage past network blazon and application and and then gear up limits if needed.
Control over network information
Mobile devices tin can brand extensive utilize of network data for streaming content, synchronizing information, downloading apps, and more. To meet the needs of users with tiered or metered data plans, Android 4.0 adds new controls for managing network data usage.
In the Settings app, colorful charts show the total data usage on each network blazon (mobile or Wi-Fi), besides as amount of data used by each running awarding. Based on their data plans, users can optionally prepare alarm levels or hard limits on data usage or disable mobile information altogether. Users tin as well manage the background information used past private applications as needed.
Designed for accessibility
A diverseness of new features greatly enhance the accessibility of Android 4.0 for users who are blind or accept visual impairments. Most important is a new explore-by-touch way that lets users navigate without having to see the screen. Touching the screen one time triggers audible feedback that identifies the UI component beneath; a second touch on in the same component activates information technology with a total bear upon consequence. The new style is especially important to support users on new devices that use virtual buttons in the System Bar, rather than dedicated hardware buttons or trackballs. Also, standard apps are updated to offering an improved accessibility experience. The Browser supports a script-based screen reader for reading favorite web content and navigating sites. For improved readability, users can also increase the default font size used across the system.
The accessibility feel begins at first setup — a simple touch gesture during setup (clockwise square from upper left) activates all accessibility features and loads a setup tutorial. Once accessibility features are active, everything visible on the screen can be spoken aloud by the standard screen reader.
Communication and sharing
Contacts and profiles are integrated beyond apps and social networks, for a consequent, personal feel everywhere — from incoming calls to emails.
Designed for the way people live, Android 4.0 integrates rich social communication and sharing touchpoints across the organization, making it easy to talk, email, text, and share.
People and profiles
Throughout the organization, a user's social groups, profiles, and contacts are linked together and integrated for easy accessibility. At the center is a new People app that offers richer profile information, including a large profile pic, phone numbers, addresses and accounts, condition updates, events, stream items, and a new button for connecting on integrated social networks.
The user's own contact information is stored in a new "Me" profile, allowing easier sharing with apps and people. All of the user's integrated contacts are displayed in an easy to manage list, including controls over which contacts are shown from whatsoever integrated account or social network. Wherever the user navigates across the system, tapping a contour photo displays Quick Contacts, with large profile pictures, shortcuts to telephone numbers, text messaging, and more.
Unified calendar, visual voicemail
To aid organize appointments and events, an updated Calendar app brings together personal, work, school, and social agendas. With user permission, other applications tin contribute events to the calendar and manage reminders, for an integrated view across multiple calendar providers. The app is redesigned to permit users manage events more easily. Calendars are color-coded and users can swipe left or right to change dates and pinch to zoom in or out agendas.
In the phone app, a new visual voicemail features integrates incoming messages, vocalism transcriptions, and sound files from ane or more than providers. Third-party applications can integrate with the Telephone app to add together their ain voice messages, transcriptions, and more to the visual voicemail inbox.
Capture the picture yous want, edit, and share instantly.
Rich and versatile camera capabilities
The Camera app includes many new features that let users capture special moments with bang-up photos and videos. Subsequently capturing images, they can edit and share them hands with friends.
When taking pictures, continuous focus, zero shutter lag exposure, and decreased shot-to-shot speed help capture clear, precise images. Stabilized image zoom lets users compose photos and video in the fashion they desire, including while video is recording. For new flexibility and convenience while shooting video, users can now accept snapshots at full video resolution just by tapping the screen equally video continues to tape.
To brand it easier to take great pictures of people, built-in face detection locates faces in the frame and automatically sets focus. For more control, users tin tap to focus anywhere in the preview epitome.
For capturing larger scenes, the Camera introduces a single-move panorama mode. In this mode, the user starts an exposure and so slowly turns the Camera to comprehend as broad a perspective as needed. The Photographic camera assembles the full range of continuous imagery into a single panoramic photo.
Subsequently taking a picture or video, users can chop-chop share it by email, text message, bluetooth, social networks, and more, just past tapping the thumbnail in the photographic camera controls.
A Photograph Gallery widget on the domicile screen.
Redesigned Gallery app with photo editor
The Gallery app now makes it easier to manage, testify, and share photos and videos. For managing collections, a redesigned album layout shows many more albums and offers larger thumbnails. There are many means to sort albums, including by time, location, people, and tags. To help pictures look their best, the Gallery now includes a powerful photograph editor. Users can crop and rotate pictures, set up levels, remove red eyes, add together effects, and much more. After retouching, users tin can select one or multiple pictures or videos to share instantly over email, text messaging, bluetooth, social networks, or other apps.
An improved Picture Gallery widget lets users look at pictures directly on their home screen. The widget can brandish pictures from a selected anthology, shuffle pictures from all albums, or bear witness a single image. After adding the widget to the home screen, users can flick through the photo stacks to locate the image they want, and so tap to load it in Gallery.
Live Effects let you change backgrounds and use Lightheaded Faces during video.
Live Furnishings for transforming video
Alive Effects is a collection of graphical transformations that add involvement and fun to videos captured in the Camera app. For example, users tin can change the background backside them to any stock or custom epitome, for just the right setting when shooting video. Also available for video is Silly Faces, a prepare of morphing effects that utilise country-of-the-art face up recognition and GPU filters to transform facial features. For instance, yous tin can use effects such as small eyes, large rima oris, big nose, face up squeeze, and more. Outside of the Camera app, Live Effects is available during video chat in the Google Talk app.
Snapping a screenshot.
Sharing with screenshots
Users can now share what's on their screens more easily by taking screenshots. Hardware buttons let them snap a screenshot and store it locally. Subsequently, they tin can view, edit, and share the screen shot in Gallery or a similar app.
Cloud-connected experience
The Browser tabs menu (left) lets you quickly switch browser tabs. The options menu (right) gives you new ways to manage your browsing feel.
Benchmark comparisons of Android Browser.
Android has e'er been cloud-connected, letting users browse the spider web and sync photos, apps, games, email, and contacts — wherever they are and across all of their devices. Android 4.0 adds new browsing and email capabilities to let users take fifty-fifty more with them and proceed advice organized.
Powerful spider web browsing
The Android Browser offers an experience that's as rich and user-friendly equally a desktop browser. It lets users instantly sync and manage Google Chrome bookmarks from all of their accounts, jump to their favorite content faster, and even salve it for reading afterwards in case there's no network available.
To become the most out of spider web content, users can now request full desktop versions of web sites, rather than their mobile versions. Users tin fix their preference for web sites separately for each browser tab. For longer content, users tin can save a copy for offline reading. To find and open up saved pages, users can scan a visual list that's included with browser bookmarks and history. For better readability and accessibility, users can increase the browser's zoom levels and override the system default text sizes.
Across all types of content, the Android Browser offers dramatically improved page rendering operation through updated versions of the WebKit cadre and the V8 Crankshaft compilation engine for JavaScript. In benchmarks run on a Nexus Southward device, the Android 4.0 browser showed an improvement of nearly 220% over the Android 2.3 browser in the V8 Criterion Suite and more than than 35% in the SunSpider 9.1 JavaScript Criterion. When run on a Galaxy Nexus device, the Android 4.0 browser showed comeback of nearly 550% in the V8 criterion and nearly 70% in the SunSpider criterion.
Improved email
In Android 4.0, email is easier to transport, read, and manage. For composing e-mail, improved car-completion of recipients helps with finding and adding frequent contacts more than quickly. For easier input of frequent text, users can now create quick responses and store them in the app, then enter them from a convenient menu when composing. When replying to a bulletin, users tin can now toggle the message to Respond All and Forwards without changing screens.
For easier browsing across accounts and labels, the app adds an integrated menu of accounts and recent labels. To help users locate and organize IMAP and Exchange email, the Email app now supports nested mail subfolders, each with synchronization rules. Users can also search across folders on the server, for faster results.
For enterprises, the Email app supports EAS v14. It supports EAS certificate authentication, provides ABQ strings for device type and mode, and allows automatic sync to exist disabled while roaming. Administrators tin can also limit zipper size or disable attachments.
For keeping track of incoming e-mail more easily, a resizable Email widget lets users movie through recent email correct from the home screen, so jump into the Email app to etch or reply.
Android Beam lets users share what they are using with a single tap.
Innovation
Android is continously driving innovation frontwards, pushing the boundaries of communication and sharing with new capabilities and interactions.
Android Beam for NFC-based sharing
Android Beam is an innovative, user-friendly feature for sharing beyond two NFC-enabled devices, Information technology lets people instantly exchange favorite apps, contacts, music, videos — most annihilation. It's incredibly unproblematic and convenient to use — there'south no carte du jour to open, application to launch, or pairing needed. Just impact one Android-powered phone to another, then tap to transport.
For sharing apps, Android Axle pushes a link to the app'southward details page in Google Play. On the other device, the Google Play client app launches and loads the details page, for easy downloading of the app. Private apps can build on Android Axle to add other types of interactions, such as passing game scores, initiating a multiplayer game or chat, and more.
Face up recognition lets you unlock your phone with your confront.
Confront Unlock
Android 4.0 introduces a completely new approach to securing a device, making each person'southward device even more than personal — Face up Unlock is a new screen-lock option that lets users unlock their devices with their faces. It takes advantage of the device front-facing camera and state-of-the-art facial recognition engineering science to register a face during setup and then to recognize it again when unlocking the device. Users just hold their devices in front of their faces to unlock, or use a backup Pin or pattern.
Wi-Fi P2P and Bluetooth HDP
Back up for Wi-Fi peer-to-peer (P2P) lets users connect directly to nearby peer devices over Wi-Fi, for more reliable, higher-speed communication (in compliance with the Wi-Fi Alliance'south Wi-Fi Direct™ certification plan). No internet connectedness or tethering is needed. Through tertiary-party apps, users tin can connect to compatible devices to take reward of new features such every bit instant sharing of files, photos, or other media; streaming video or sound from another device; or connecting to compatible printers or other devices.
Android 4.0 besides introduces congenital-in support for connecting to Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) devices. With support from third-party apps, users can connect to wireless medical devices and sensors in hospitals, fitness centers, homes, and elsewhere.
New Developer Features
Unified UI framework for phones, tablets, and more
Android four.0 brings a unified UI framework that lets developers create elegant, innovative apps for phones, tablets, and more. It includes all of the familiar Android 3.x interface elements and APIs — fragments, content loaders, Action Bar, rich notifications, resizable habitation screen widgets, and more than — equally well equally new elements and APIs.
For developers, the unified UI framework in Android 4.0 means new UI tools, consequent design practices, simplified code and resource, and streamlined development across the range of Android-powered devices.
Fundamental Honeycomb developer features, now for phones too
Core UI
- Fragments and content loaders
- Resizeable home screen widgets
- Rich notifications
- Multi-option, drag-drib, clipboard
- Improved screen-support API
- Hardware-accelerated 2d graphics
Graphics and animation
- Property-based animation
- Renderscript 3D graphics
Media and connectivity
- HTTP Alive streaming
- Bluetooth A2DP and HSP devices
- Support for RTP
- MTP/PTP file transfer
- DRM framework
- Input from keyboard, mouse, gamepad, joystick
Enterprise
- Total device encryption
- DPM policies for encrypted storage and passwords
Advice and sharing
Android 4.0 extends social and sharing features to any awarding on the device. Applications tin can integrate contacts, contour data, stream items, and calendar events from any of the user's activities or social networks.
Social API
A shared social provider and API provide a new unified store for contacts, profile data, stream items, and photos. Any app or social network with user permission can contribute raw contacts and brand them accessible to other apps and networks. Applications with user permission can also read profile information from the provider and display it in their applications.
The social API lets applications store standard contact data as well as new types of content for any given contact, including large profile photos, stream items, and contempo activity feedback. Recent activeness feedback is a standard fashion for applications to "tag" a contact with common activity, such as when the user calls the contact or sends an email or SMS message. The social provider uses the recent activity feedback equally a new point in ranking, such every bit for name auto-complete, to keep the most relevant contacts ranked closest to the top.
Applications can as well let users prepare a social connectedness to a contact from the People app. When the user touches Add together Connectedness in a contact, the app sends a public intent that other apps can handle, displaying any UI needed to create the social connection.
Building on the social API, developers can add powerful new interactions that span multiple social networks and contacts sources.
Agenda API
A shared agenda content provider and framework API make it easier for developers to add calendar services to their apps.
With user permission, any awarding can add events to the shared database and manage dates, attendees, alerts, and reminders. Applications can also read entries from the database, including events contributed by other applications, and handle the brandish of event alerts and reminders. Using the agenda provider, applications tin can take advantage of effect data sourced from a variety of apps and protocols, to offer innovative ways of viewing and managing a user's events. Apps tin can also use calendar data to improve the relevance of their other content.
For lighter-weight access to calendar services, the Agenda app defines a set of public Intents for creating, viewing, and editing events. Rather than needing to implement a calendar UI and integrate directly with the calendar provider, applications can just circulate calendar Intents. When the Agenda app receives the Intents, it launches the appropriate UI and stores any result data entered. Using calendar Intents, for example, apps can let users add events direct from lists, dialogs, or domicile screen widgets, such as for making restaurant reservations or booking time with friends.
Visual voicemail API
A shared Voicemail provider and API permit developers to build applications that contribute to a unified voicemail store. Voicemails are displayed and played in the phone call log tab of the platform's Phone app.
Android Beam
Android Axle is an NFC-based feature that lets users instantly share information near the apps they are using, just past touching two NFC-enabled phones together. When the devices are in range — within a few centimeters — the organisation sets up an NFC connexion and displays a sharing UI. To share whatever they are viewing with the other device, users just touch the screen.
For developers, Android Beam is a new way of triggering almost whatsoever type of proximity-based interaction. For example, information technology can let users instantly substitution contacts, gear up multiplayer gaming, join a chat or video phone call, share a photo or video, and more. The organization provides the low-level NFC support and the sharing UI, while the foreground app provides lightweight data to transfer to the other device. Developers accept complete control over the data that is shared and how information technology is handled, so almost any interaction is possible. For larger payloads, developers can fifty-fifty use Android Beam to initiate a connection and transfer the information over Bluetooth, without the need for user-visible pairing.
Fifty-fifty if developers do not add custom interactions based on Android Axle they tin can even so benefit from it being deeply integrated into Android. Past default the system shares the app's Google Play URL, so it's like shooting fish in a barrel for the user to download or purchase the app right away.
Modular sharing widget
The UI framework includes a new widget, ShareActionProvider, that lets developers rapidly embed standard share functionality and UI in the Action Bar of their applications. Developers simply add ShareActionProvider to the menu and set up an intent that describes the desired sharing activity. The system handles the residual, building up the list of applications that can handle the share intent and dispatching the intent when the user chooses from the carte du jour.
New media capabilities
Depression-level streaming multimedia
Android 4.0 provides a straight, efficient path for depression-level streaming multimedia. The new path is platonic for applications that demand to maintain complete control over media data earlier passing information technology to the platform for presentation. For case, media applications can now retrieve data from any source, utilise proprietary encryption/decryption, and then send the data to the platform for display.
Applications tin can now ship processed data to the platform every bit a multiplexed stream of audio/video content in MPEG-2 transport stream format. The platform de-muxes, decodes, and renders the content. The audio rails is rendered to the agile sound device, while the video track is rendered to either a Surface or a SurfaceTexture. When rendering to a SurfaceTexture, the application tin can apply subsequent graphics effects to each frame using OpenGL.
To back up this low-level streaming, the platform introduces a new native API based on Khronos OpenMAX AL i.0.one. The API is implemented on the same underlying services as the platform'due south existing OpenSL ES API, and so developers tin can brand apply of both APIs together if needed. Tools support for low-level streaming multimedia volition exist available in an upcoming release of the Android NDK.
New photographic camera capabilities
Developers can have reward of a variety of new camera features in Android 4.0. ZSL exposure, continuous focus, and image zoom let apps capture better even so and video images, including during video capture. Apps tin even capture full-resolution snapshots while shooting video. Apps can now prepare custom metering regions in a camera preview, and then manage white balance and exposure dynamically for those regions. For easier focusing and image processing, a face-detection service identifies and tracks faces in a preview and returns their screen coordinates.
Media furnishings for transforming images and video
A set of high-performance transformation filters permit developers apply rich effects to any image passed as an OpenGL ES 2.0 texture. Developers can adjust colour levels and brightness, modify backgrounds, sharpen, crop, rotate, add lens distortion, and apply other furnishings. The transformations are processed by the GPU, so they are fast enough for processing prototype frames loaded from deejay, camera, or video stream.
Audio remote controls
Android four.0 adds a new audio remote command API that lets media applications integrate with playback controls that are displayed in a remote view. Media applications tin integrate with a remote music playback control that'due south built into in the platform'south lock screen, allowing users to control vocal selection and playback without having to unlock and navigate to the music app.
Using the sound remote command API, whatever music or media app can register to receive media push events from the remote command and then manage play state accordingly. The awarding can also supply metadata to the remote command, such as anthology art or image, play state, rail number and description, duration, genre, and more.
New media codecs and containers
Android 4.0 adds support for boosted media types and containers to give developers admission to the formats they need. For loftier-quality compressed images, the media framework adds support for WebP content. For video, the framework now supports streaming VP8 content. For streaming multimedia, the framework supports HTTP Live streaming protocol version iii and encoding of ADTS-independent AAC content. Additionally, developers can now use Matroska containers for Vorbis and VP8 content.
New types of connectivity
Wi-Fi P2P
Developers can employ a framework API to discover and connect directly to nearby devices over a high-operation, secure Wi-Fi peer-to-peer (P2P) connection. No cyberspace connexion or hotspot is needed. Android'southward Wi-Fi P2P framework complies with the Wi-Fi Alliance's Wi-Fi Direct™ certification program.
Wi-Fi peer-to-peer (P2P) opens new opportunities for developers to add innovative features to their applications. Applications can use Wi-Fi P2P to share files, photos, or other media betwixt devices or betwixt a desktop computer and an Android-powered device. Applications could besides use Wi-Fi P2P to stream media content from a peer device such as a digital telly or audio thespian, connect a grouping of users for gaming, print files, and more.
Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP)
Developers can now build powerful medical applications that utilise Bluetooth to communicate with wireless devices and sensors in hospitals, fitness centers, homes, and elsewhere. Applications can collect and manage information from HDP source devices and transmit information technology to backend medical applications such equally records systems, data analysis services, and others.
Using a framework API, applications tin utilize Bluetooth to observe nearby devices, constitute reliable or streaming data channels, and manage data transmission. Applications can supply any IEEE 11073 Manager to retrieve and interpret health data from Continua-certified devices such equally heart-rate monitors, blood meters, thermometers, and scales.
New UI components and capabilities
Layout enhancements
A new layout, GridLayout, improves the performance of Android applications by supporting flatter view hierarchies that are faster to layout and render. Because hierarchies are flatter, developers can also manage alignments between components that are visually related to each other even when they are not logically related, for precise control over awarding UI. GridLayout is also specifically designed to be configured past drag-and-drop design tools such as Android Studio.
OpenGL ES texture views
A new TextureView object lets developers directly integrate OpenGL ES textures as rendering targets in a UI hierarchy. The object lets developers display and manipulate OpenGL ES rendering only as they would a normal view object in the bureaucracy, including moving, transforming, and animative the view every bit needed. The TextureView object makes information technology easy for developers to embed camera preview, decoded video, OpenGL game scenes, and more. TextureView tin can exist viewed every bit a more powerful version of the existing SurfaceView object, since information technology offers the same benefits of access to a GL rendering surface, with the added reward of having that surface participate fully in the normal view bureaucracy.
Hardware-accelerated second cartoon
All Android-powered devices running Android 4.0 are required to support hardware-accelerated 2D drawing. Developers tin can accept advantage of this to add smashing UI furnishings while maintaining optimal performance on loftier-resolution screens, even on phones. For instance, developers can rely on accelerated scaling, rotation, and other 2d operations, equally well as accelerated UI components such as TextureView and compositing modes such as filtering, blending, and opacity.
New input types and text services
Stylus input, button support, hover events
Android 4.0 includes full support for stylus input events, including tilt and distance axes, pressure, and related motion event properties. To help applications distinguish motion events from unlike sources, the platform adds distinct tool types for stylus, finger, mouse, and eraser. For improved input from multi-button pointing devices, the platform at present provides distinct main, secondary, and tertiary buttons, likewise equally back and forward buttons. Hover-enter and hover-leave events are too added, for improved navigation and accessibility. Developers can build on these new input features to add together powerful interactions to their apps, such as precise drawing and gesturing, handwriting and shape recognition, improved mouse input, and others.
Text services API for integrating spelling checkers
Android 4.0 lets applications query available text services such equally dictionaries and spell checkers for word suggestions, corrections, and similar data. The text services are external to the active IME, so developers tin create and distribute dictionaries and proffer engines that plug into the platform. When an application receives results from a text service — for example, word suggestions — it tin can display them in a dedicated suggestion popup window direct inside the text view, rather than relying on the IME to display them.
Enhanced accessibility APIs
Android 4.0 adds new accessibility features and an enhanced API to let developers better the user experience in their apps, especially on devices that don't have hardware buttons. For accessibility services such as screen readers in particular, the platform offers new APIs to query window content, for easier navigation, better feedback, and richer user interfaces.
Accessibility API
To let applications manage interactions more than effectively when accessibility features are enabled, the platform adds accessibility events for explore-past-touch on manner, scrolling, and text selection. For these and other events, the platform can attach a new object called an accessibility record that provides extra information about the event context.
Using the accessibility record and related APIs, applications tin can at present access the view bureaucracy associated with an event. Applications can query for central backdrop such as parent and child nodes, available states, supported actions, screen position, and more. Applications tin also asking changes to certain properties to help manage focus and selected state. For example, an accessibility service could apply these new capabilities to add user-friendly features such as screen-search by text.
Text-to-speech API
A new framework API lets developers write text-to-speech engines and make them available to whatsoever app requesting TTS capabilities.
Efficient network usage
In Android 4.0, users tin see how much network data their running apps are using. They tin can also prepare limits on information usage by network type and disable background information usage for specific applications. In this context, developers need to pattern their apps to run efficiently and follow best practices for checking the network connection. Android iv.0 provides network APIs to let applications run into those goals.
Equally users motion betwixt networks or prepare limits on network data, the platform lets applications query for connectedness type and availability. Developers can apply this data to dynamically manage network requests to ensure the all-time feel for users. Developers can as well build custom network and information-usage options into their apps, and then betrayal them to users directly from Settings by means of a new arrangement Intent.
Security for apps and content
Secure direction of credentials
Android 4.0 makes information technology easier for applications to manage authentication and secure sessions. A new keychain API and underlying encrypted storage let applications store and retrieve individual keys and their corresponding certificate chains. Any awarding can apply the keychain API to install and store user certificates and CAs securely.
Accost Space Layout Randomization
Android 4.0 now provides address space layout randomization (ASLR) to assistance protect organisation and 3rd party applications from exploitation due to memory-management issues.
Enhancements for Enterprise
VPN client API
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 likewise accept advantage of a standard VPN client built into the platform that provides access to L2TP and IPSec protocols.
Device policy direction for camera
The platform adds a new policy control for administrators who manage devices using an installed Device Policy Manager. Administrators can now remotely disable the camera on a managed device for users working in sensitive environments.
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