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At the Dreamforce conference held in San Francisco last week, Eric Schmidt continued to emphasize some of his favorite talking points, from cloud computing to the future of the web with HTML5. He also touched briefly upon Google’s mobile platform, confirming the launch of Ice Cream Sandwich for sometime in October or November. His exact words:
“We have a new operating system, internally known as Ice Cream Sandwich for some reason, which is being released in October/November, which everyone’s really excited about.”
Google has only ever officially mentioned a Q4 release, though rumors have recently point to the operating system coming to market as soon as October, coinciding with the launch of a new Nexus-branded device. From Schmidt’s wording, it seems a late October/early November release is most probable, though most likely as an exclusive to the aforementioned handset. It could take additional months before the OS will start trickling out to other non-Nexus handsets. But that’s the word from the horse’s mouth, and seeing as September is already speeding along we don’t have much longer to wait at all to get our hands on a bit of this nice cool Ice Cream Sandwich treat. Check out the embed of the keynote below, the juicy bit comes at 30:25.
[via Android and Me]
Nice, I got my money ready.
Can you please share how you are going to purchase ICS to put on your phone? :D
I am going to purchase a phone with ICS. :D
Google will put it on-line or you could get CM8 assuming it’ll be made
I find it a little odd Eric referred to ICS as a new operating system. It is really new? I mean in theory, MS claims each iteration of Windows is a new OS. I would like it if Google didnt follow this marketing plow in the same fashion.
In a lot of ways yes. This is supposed to be Android 4.0 and merge the tablet and phone versions into one and no longer require screen buttons at all. It’s a major release.
Will ICS replace screen buttons or hardware buttons? I was under the impression that the Prime wasn’t going to have any hardware buttons,aside from one.
It is up to the manufacturer to decide if they want to use the on screen buttons or not but at least now they have the option. I am sure that the Nexus Prime will only have 3 hardware buttons, power, volume up and volume down.
It can, but it doesn’t have to. It will be backwards compatible with phones that already have touch/physical buttons, but according to Android’s Matias Duarte (formerly of webOS) the future they expect no buttons the same way Honeycomb tablets work, where everything is on screen. You’re correct. Prime will not have buttons. (other than sleep/power)
I want it now, on a Samsung with 720p 4.5” screen!!
Sounds like it’ll be impressive, just not sure about all onscreen buttons…
That isn’t confirmed yet.
Excited about this….
So if out October/November, does that mean a September / October announcement!!
Just release the source code and all rooted devices can have it (developers willing).
They said that they will and that they didn’t want to release Honeycomb’s code until ICS was finished.
I can’t wait to have it on my Nexus S. If they do decide to release the Nexus Prime in October I might just end up buying a different device since I buy a new one every year in January.
Mes thinks I’ll wait for the new Nexus. I would hate to buy a new device now only to have it released with Gingerbread. Which I have used on my Droid, so it’s stale. All these folks going out and buying the Bionic or whatever will be stuck with Gingerbread for quite a while I feel. Give me unlocked or give me nothing.
I love you, Eric Schmidt
Google needs to give more attention to the Nexus S. Since it came out, it has had nothing but problems. Now they are releasing a new Nexus device? What is the point? Money, always comes down to money. WTF did the Nexus S not have removable SD card? or HDMI out? Why is the NFC chip doing nothing still yet they feel the need to come out with an updated version because the Nexus S is not sufficient? Greedy bastards, enough is enough. They release a new device and the day after start working on the next one, and stop supporting the current ones. Nexus S hardware is barely being taxed with today’s applications. Cough up your money everybody, see you in line at the food bank.
Are you for real?
How did the Nexus S get less support than the Nexus one? When they released the Nexus S, I was like how can they abandon the Nexus One in less than a year, but we learned they would release a nexus device each year. So I don’t know how this comes as a surprise to you. And the removable SD-card thing was there from the start,….you disliked it and didn’t buy the phone or you shut up about it and bought it…can’t expect them to suddenly dish out android 2.4 who enables Nexus S sd-card functions :S
If you believe the nexus S hardware is still good enough than why would you even consider buying the new Nexus device?
If I were you I’d laugh at the people who replaced their Nexus S for the Nexus Prime, instead of complain like your doing now.
I for one have been looking out to buy the Nexus Prime from when we first heard about it.
My money is being coughed up as we speak.
p.s. Is there any company that doesn’t release a device and the next day start working on a new one? And as far as I believe, they haven’t stopped supporting the Nexus S, just recently did they issue an update to fix the voice issue.
Again, are you for real?
Craig,
Did Google come to your home in the middle of the night, put a gun to your head and make you buy a phone you arent happy with?
At what point does one take personal responsibility before the emotion based cries of, “greedy bastards”.
You bought a phone you arent happy with OWN YOUR CHOICE stop blaming companies for DECISIONS YOU MADE.
I dont get your food bank comment.
Did you spend money on the Nexus S that you should have spent on food to avoid starving?
It’s Samsung. It ‘s junk
ice cream sandwiches for christmas this year.
I like how Schmidt took the higher ground on the bait that d-bag tried to lay about Apple and Steve Jobs.
That guy was an embarrassment to Salesforce.
what time in the video please?
That is why I love Google.
I plan on switching from T-mobile to Verizon. I love T-mobile, but where I go to school I get GPRS which sucks big time. What I am holding out for however is to see where the next Nexus device goes to. I don’t mind waiting it out, just would be completely awesome if it would so kindly come out on Verizon. Heck, it can come out on all the carriers and make us all happy!
Features I want:
Allow me to bypass Hulu.com not working on mobile by making the browser the full Chrome browser
Ability to do custom roms in a simpler fashion (MIUI style)
More extensive voice control. I wanna be able to navigate the entire UI by voice
Features I want:
-chrome browser (with changeable user agent settings and better tab switching)
-Easier way to multi-task (the multi-tasking is great, long pressing the home button is not)
-A lot more customization options in the phone, from homescreens to different user profiles
-Integration with Google+
-Compatability with non-creditcard payment methods (although that might just be a market issue)
-Able to export game-saves
-Built-in remote wipe feature
-Better notification dismissal options
Other things google needs to do, unrelated to ICS:
-release Music beta to non-US citizens
-release Google Voice to non-US citizens
-release Google Movies to non-US citizens
Well I hope that ICS comes to other devices pretty quickly, I don’t want to buy a new phone yet, only had my SGS2 2 months!
Aw!! Ima have to wait until they come out with a qwerty phone since I’m deadly in love with qwerty phones. But I guess I can hold on to the Nexus Prime until one comes out. :D
The Thunderbolt in theory should get Ice Cream sandwhich since google wants each phone to be good for 2 Software Updates. heck they should just skip the thunderbolt’s gingerbread and give them ice cream
whats the hate on the nexus s for? It runs faster and smoother then my evo 4g and its smaller and sleeker, and every1 loveess the evo
i think the most embarassing part of eric’s quote was the words “for some reason”.
has nobody at google explained to him how the naming convention is worked out for android releases?
holy crap!
Maybe its not supposed to be called Ice Cream Sandwich…
Word is that it (Nexus Prime) will be a dual core, but the quads will all want ICS, we are going to need more and faster ram. Gddr 6 ram, is 25 times faster than the ddr 2 on our smartphone/tabs.