Coby shows off a quintet of Ice Cream Sandwich tablets for 2012

Not one to be left out in the cold, budget manufacturer Coby has announced no less than five new Android tablet,s all of them running Ice Cream Sandwich. The devices will cover the gamut as far as screen sizes for tablets go, with 7, 8, 9, 9.7 and 10inch varieties. There’s no specific launch date available, but Coby says that the tablets will be on hand at CES in January. All five of the tablets will feature 1Ghz Cortex 8 processors and a full gigabyte of RAM, which should be enough to run Ice Cream Sandwich, even if it doesn’t exactly zoom. Naturally they’re WiFi only, but they’ll be equipped with HDMI ports and up to 32GB of storage – not bad. There’s no mention of the Android Market or Google apps, so they may not be included. We’ll...

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Motorola phones getting upgrade to ICS in about 6 months

We have heard and seen plenty of reports from all types of manufacturers over the future of their Android line up. Many have stated when updates to the new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will arrive and today Motorola has made the process even more clear. They stated the DROID RAZR would see ICS early next year and also unlock bootloaders, but we’ve heard that chime from them before. Today Motorola breaks down the process but I’m not sure how I feel about the news. Motorola has also recently tweeted devices would see ICS updates within 6 weeks of Google releasing the source code. We now know that meant we would all receive an update and details on when to expect ICS for their devices — not that they’d actual get updated that...

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Developer Gets Android 4.0 Up and Booting On The Amazon Kindle Fire [Video]

This is the moment many brand new Kindle Fire owners have been waiting for. The day a developer would successfully port Android 4.0 to the affordable little tablet. I don’t have many details regarding the developer, G1011999‘s work (will update the post once I dig around a bit), we can see Ice Cream Sandwich is up and booting. It’s all still very much a work in process and aside from the touchscreen, not much else is working. The dev did get up a quick video of his feats in action and while it did seem a bit laggy, I’m sure it’s something that can be optimized in the future. For now check out the video for some Android 4.0 pr0n. ...

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Archos shows off official Ice Cream Sandwich on 101 G9 tablet

Well lookie here: Archos isn’t letting anyone beat it to the Ice Cream Sandwich party. The French hardware company showed off an early build of Android 4.0 running on its economical 101 G9 tablet. The latest build from earlier today is demonstrated on what looks like a retail unit. Archos is planning on releasing the update sometime in Q1 2012. From the demonstration, it looks like Ice Cream Sandwich is running extremely well on the 10-inch tablet, with nary a stutter or hiccup in its performance. By now we’re pretty familiar with the ICS tablet interface (basically a cleaner, faster version of Honeycomb) but this is a nice confirmation of other sources, like Nvidia’s demonstration of the Transformer Prime. It still needs a little...

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6-year-old HTC Universal gets Ice Cream Sandwich port

A few days ago I joked with my fellow Android Community writers that I’d like to see Ice Cream Sandwich ported to the Atari 2600, so I could use it to run an Atari 2600 emulator. That hasn’t happened, but in terms of wow factor, the latest ICS port isn’t that far off. The HTC Universal, the Taiwanese company’s gigantic flipping QWERTY Windows Mobile megadevice from 2005, has been given a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich via (where else?) the XDA Developers forum. The port is based off of CyanogenMod 9, the ICS version of the most popular custom Android ROM. If you’ve been following the mobile tech world for a while, you may have drooled over the HTC Universal way back when, just like I did. (Not that I could do much more than drool, being...

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Android 4.0 for $100: NOVO7 is the cheapest Ice Cream Sandwich tablet around

Android’s open source nature lends itself to a staggering variety of form factors and price points, but if Chinese manufacturer MIPS Technologies is to be believed, it’s breaking into the low-end in a huge way today. The company is promoting its brand new NOVO7 device as “the first Ice Cream Sandwich tablet”, and has priced it at a staggering $99 USD. The specs aren’t amazing and the hardware won’t turn heads, but if you’ve got to have ICS right now (and can’t bring yourself to try out a custom ROM) this would seem to be the cheapest way to do so. The NOVO7 is your basic 7-inch cheapo tablet, not altogether unlike the Polaroid models that were on sale everywhere on Black Friday. A “power-efficient” 1GHz processor it twinned to a 444Mhz...

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MIUI custom ROM shows off an early Ice Cream Sandwich build

You didn’t think CyanogenMod was the only ROM starting on an Ice Cream Sandwich version, did you? The MIUI team, makers of arguably the second most popular custom ROM out there, has already begun porting their extensive set of Android customizations to run on Ice Cream Sandwich’s open source code. The developers issued a special preview on their website, with a walk-through of the updated interface. The changes don’t look that different from the current build of MIUI, but then the aim is not to duplicate Ice Cream Sandwich‘s look. MIUI has an interface all its own, borrowing elements from Android, iOS, WebOS and the various flavors of manufacturer customizations to make something that attempts to blend the best of all available options....

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Android Design Preview tool mirrors PC screens for live previews

Here’s a fun hack that should be useful for Android developers and designers, and at least interesting for the rest of us. If you’re designer who’s working on high-quality mock ups for a new app, seeing how they look on your actual device is a bit of a hassle – you’ve got to save the files, copy them over to the device, try it out, then make changes and repeat. The Android Design Preview tool takes all those steps out by allowing your phone to see a one-to-one pixel representation of your computer screen. In practice, it works kind of like a tiny secondary monitor. Connect your Android phone to your computer using ADB, then start the tool on your computer. Move the preview window to the editing app of your choice (make sure it’s scaled...

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New Ice Cream Sandwich Hidden Feature: “Dreams” (Screensavers)

Those boys over at Google definitely know how to have a good time. First it was the NyanDroid Easter egg and now we have this. Well, I wouldn’t exactly call this an Easter egg. More like a hidden feature no one has heard about — until now. It’s called “Dreams” and it acts as a screen saver that strangely serves absolutely no other purpose than looking kinda flashy. The feature is actually buried deep in the Ice Cream Sandwich OS but with a little know-how and the use of Launcher Pro, Dreams is easily accessible. So, when you want to zone out and just watch all of your icons fly at your face — now you can. If you’re into that sorta thing. What’s more is the flying icons can actually...

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Sony Ericsson Italy Pegs March for Ice Cream Sandwich Updates

Sony Ericsson has already made the bold claim that all of their 2011 handsets will receive Android 4.0, but now they are among the first to assign a potential timeframe for the arrival of Ice Cream Sandwich. According to Maurizio de Palma, marketing manager for Sony Ericsson Italy, the Xperia line of phones will begin to see their ICS updates in March of next year. That is still a good four months away, and it would not come as a surprise for the date to be pushed back. Still, the news offers a hopeful outlook. After catching much heat for the poor handling of earlier updates to their Android devices, Sony Ericsson has pledged to improve the process in nearly every way, from the timeliness of release to better communication with handset...

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Motorola Triumph receives Ice Cream Sandwich build

Do not be misled by the moniker Motorola Triumph, it might sound pretty mighty and all, but in reality, it is not exactly a high end device that you would lust for. It falls under the mid-range scheme of things, but it has proved to be quite the attractive purchase for those who want something better than what the bottom of the food chain offers. It remains to be seen whether the Motorola Triumph will be on the receiving end of an official Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 update, but as mom used to say, if you want something done, you’ve gotta do it yourself. And that is exactly what a developer on the AndroidForums have done – seemingly ported the Ice Cream Sandwich ROM onto the device with success. Needless to say, this port is not complete...

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Chip maker Rockchip claims worlds first Android 4.0 ICS Tablet

We’ve already seen tons of ROM’s and ports slowly making their way to Android phones and tablets running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich now that the source code is available. Today Chinese processor and tablet maker Rockchip claim to have the worlds first Android 4.0 ICS tablet and it will be ready to ship in the first weeks of December. Rockchip may or may not sound familiar. They are in-part to blame for the masses of cheap Android tablets that hit Ebay with Android 2.2 and 2.3 back when Android tablets were just starting to hit the market, and many were branded as Rockchip tablets themselves or with 3rd party names. However, none of them had that great of performance sadly. The new RK2918 is a dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex chip...

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HTC G1 Gets A Taste Of Ice Cream Sandwich

Still rocking the HTC G1, the world's first Android phone? Didn't think so, but if you have one laying around somewhere, you may want to grab that thing and knock the dust off of it. Why, you ask? Because there's a "working" (I use that term loosely here) port of ICS ready to flash.As you may imagine, it is incredibly slow and nearly unusable, but c'mon - you have to admit that it's pretty cool. Here's a video of it in action (again, I use that term loosely).There are a few things that still aren't working in this build, like screen rotation, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Everything is else is go, so, at the very least, you can check out what ICS is all about. Very slowly.While this is definitely not a practical port, one thing is certain: it's things...

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Ice Cream Sandwich gets dedicated search button mod

Google may be a search company first and foremost, but Ice Cream Sandwich shifts Android away from a dedicated search button and replaces it with the app switcher. Using virtual buttons has benefits for modders, however, and MoDaCo’s Paul O’Brien has wasted no time in adding a dedicated search option in the ICS button bar. As you’d expect, tapping it brings up the search dialog, just as the dedicated search buttons on previous Android phones would do. Google hasn’t exactly excised search from Android 4.0 altogether – in fact the homescreen now has a persistent search box across the top, that’s carried over all five panes – but this dedicated key makes it a little easier. Sometimes it’s the little tweaks that can make the most difference...

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Adobe: Flash Will Be Updated To Support ICS Before Year's End, But Not Future Versions Of Android

Earlier this month, Adobe announced that it would be halting development on the mobile version of Flash, which included support for Android devices. More recently, it was realized that the current version of Flash isn't compatible with Ice Cream Sandwich, leaving early adopters of the Galaxy Nexus without the ability to view flash content on the web. Adobe has now confirmed that it will be bringing Flash to ICS devices before the end of 2011, but it will not support any version of Android past 4.0. Throughout the lifespan of ICS, Adobe will continue to push critical updates, bug fixes, and security updates to Flash for Android to ensure device security, but that will be the extent of development as far as mobile Flash is concerned....

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CyanogenMod 9 Ice Cream Sandwich is coming to the Galaxy Tab 10.1

One of the earliest and most important parts of Ice Cream Sandwich that Google announced was that it would integrate the code and user interface for phone and tablet versions of Android. We know that ICS tablets are due pretty soon, with Asus committing to a quick update for the upcoming Transformer Prime and Samsung already promising upgrades for its myriad tablets. Galaxy Tab 10.1 owners may not have very long at all to wait: Steve “Cyanogen” Kondik has announced that his extremely popular ROM series CyanogenMod will be coming to the Galaxy Tab when it upgrades to ICS in version 9. The CyanogenMod team has already begun work on CyanogenMod 9 (version 7 is Gingerbread, version 8 is Honeycomb, and probably won’t be made), with stable...

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Galaxy Nexus owners reporting volume issues

Into every life a little rain must fall. For European Galaxy Nexus owners, who are currently the envy of most of the Android world, that rain is coming in the form of some frustrating volume issues. Apparently some HSPA+ phones are randomly switching between volume and sound states, much to the consternation of users. According to a quick poll, about half of users are experiencing the issue, though our own UK editor has not. It seems that some very specific parameters must be met for the volume issue to crop up. First, you’ve got to be using the 900MHz range of spectrum for your particular carrier. Next you need to be in a relatively weak signal area, causing the Galaxy Nexus’ radio to automatically boost itself. Regions with lots ...

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Get Ice Cream Sandwich’s keyboard now, no root needed

Yes, we know – the wait for Ice Cream Sandwich to show up for your device and/or in your region is getting frustrating. But you can slake your hunger for Ice Cream now with a taste of its new keyboard, for any Android device. Thanks to XDA member “for.digit“. (funny how no one on XDA is ever called Bob or Sam.) He’s wrapped up the new ICS version of Android’s native keyboard in a free Market app, available to just about anyone. It’s not quite perfect, thanks to the noticeable lack of the microphone button. And since the active voice dictation was one of the things that really put the ICS keyboard over the top, the Android Market app becomes something of a theme for the standard Gingerbread or Froyo keyboard. Given the deep integration...

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Nexus S and Nexus S 4G get early Ice Cream Sandwich ROMs

Those lucky Nexus owners, they get everything sooner. In this case, it’s a relatively stable AOSP version of Ice Cream Sandwich for the previous generation of Google’s developer phone. The ROM is available for eager Android fans right now – the only thing that appears to be missing is a reliable video record function. The work comes from XDA member “kwiboo”, and he’s been hard at work on the software for the last few days; the two separate ROMs are already on their second version. Functions are mostly complete, though the WiFi drivers need a quick patch. Since Android’s source code doesn’t include Gmail, YouTube, the Android Market and similar Google-branded apps, those packages are being directly loaded from the Galaxy Nexus. Check...

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Adobe says Flash for ICS will be last supported OS

We have already talked about the fact that there was supposed to be no Flash support for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Adobe has now announced that it will be offering Flash for ICS after all. There is a catch though; Adobe has noted that ICS will be the last supported Android OS for Flash. That means all future version of Android will have to make it with no Flash. Flash for Android 4.0 is expected by the end of the year. The company will continue to offer patches and security updates for existing versions of Flash after the Android 4.0 version is offered. This will get all the folks planning to get a Galaxy Nexus that lacks Flash support for content using flash. Once those Android 5.0 handsets start to hit, Google will need to...

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