Thanks for signing up!
Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go.
11 Ways Android Ice Cream Sandwich Completely Dominates iOS
We had a lot of good things to say about Android Ice Cream Sandwich in our review yesterday.
Advertisement
It's definitely the biggest and best upgrade to Android in since version 2.0, and is finally getting close enough to iOS that it's made us consider switching for a while.
Why?
We decided to put together our favorite features in Ice Cream Sandwich that we think are better than what you'll find in iOS.
Don't worry Apple lovers, tomorrow we'll cover the features in iOS that crush Ice Cream Sandwich!
iOS made a great move by allowing Twitter integration in iOS 5. But beyond that, texting, and e-mail, your sharing options end there.
Ice Cream Sandwich gives you the option to share on almost every major service: Evernote, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook...you name it. All you have to do is download each respective app and sign in. Easy.
Now that all major carriers except Sprint have some sort of data cap policy in place, it's more important than ever to make sure you're not going over your limit. It could end up costing you.
Ice Cream Sandwich has a new data usage monitor that gives you a graphical representation of how much data you're using each month. You can also see which apps are using the most data and adjust your usage habits accordingly. Still worried about going over? You can tell Ice Cream Sandwich to set a data limit each month. If you're about to go over that, ICS will automatically shut off your phone's cellular data.
Yes, iOS will tell you how much data you're using, but that feature is nowhere near as robust as what ICS has.
Android has allowed you to pin contacts to the home screen for awhile now, but Ice Cream Sandwich gives you even more options. Now you can group your contacts into folders and decide if you want their icon to link to SMS or the voice dialer.
iOS makes it much more difficult to access your favorite contacts, forcing you do dig through the Phone's contact menus, then deciding if you want to text or call that person.
Google borrowed its slick search bar from Honeycomb and ported it over to Ice Cream Sandwich. It's great. It searches all the stuff stored on your phone (just like iOS' Spotlight), but also includes web searches from Google.
It's also accessible via a non-intrusive clear search bar on all your home screens, so you don't have to swipe over to find it like you do with iOS' Spotlight.
We all know the Gmail app for iOS stinks. So that means those of us who love using Gmail are stuck with Apple's own Mail app. It works just so-so.
Gmail in Ice Cream Sandwich works like a dream, letting you search your entire archive of messages and integrating your phone's native contacts with your Gmail address book.
The only advantage iOS has is the ability to show a unified inbox for multiple accounts. ICS is missing that.
Android has always been better at multitasking then iOS, but Ice Cream Sandwich takes it to the next level. Now you see the apps you have running in a slick list by tapping the far right function button at the bottom of your screen. To close an app, all you have to do is swipe across it. It's very satisfying.
iOS' multitasking is there, but it's still just as clunky as when it was first introduced in iOS 4 in 2010. To see which apps you have running, you have to double tap the home button. If you want to close an app, you have to hold down an icon until it wiggles, then tap the "X" on each individual app. Tedious.
Android had notifications first, and it still does it better than iOS. In Ice Cream Sandwich, Google added the pull down notifications menu to the lock screen, so it your phone doesn't look so jumbled when you turn it on and have a ton of alerts waiting for you.
We also like that notifications appear in the same bar as battery life, clock, Wi-Fi, etc, which eliminates the need for another annoying interruption like the flip-down banners in iOS.
Widgets are incredibly handy on a smartphone, especially when it comes to tasks like turning off Bluetooth or connecting to Wi-Fi. It's also nice to be able to check e-mail, weather, and RSS at a quick glance without opening an app.
However, iOS does have two widgets: Weather and Stocks. But those can only live in your notifications menu. Plus you don't have the option to add more widgets from third parties unless you jailbreak your iPhone.
Ice Cream Sandwich's app is much easier to access than the one in iOS. From the lock screen, all you have to do is drag the lock over the camera icon and the app launches. In iOS, you have to double tap the iPhone's home button then tap the camera button. Annoying.
ICS' camera app also has a panoramic mode built in, unlike the iOS camera. That's a nice addition.
In much the same way Gmail integrates with Ice Cream Sandwich, the same goes for your Google Calendar. The new ICS Calendar has been redesigned to give you a great a beautiful visual representation of what your day looks like. Each calendar is color-coded with bars stacked vertically to give you an idea when in the day each event occurs. We love it.
The interface for adding new events to your calendar is a lot more user friendly than the one in iOS too. Plus we're not a fan of the weird new leathery design Apple chose for the Calendar app on iPad.
Apple had to find a way to set the iPhone 4S apart from the iPhone 4, so it included Siri, the voice-controlled assistant. The 4S also has voice dictation for hands-free typing. But despite the fact that the iPhone 4 has been proven to be able to handle Siri, it's still not there.
On the other hand, all Ice Cream Sandwich phones -- and all phones running Gingerbread -- will have voice dictation for typing. Google isn't punishing users with older phones by limiting this feature.
Click here for our full review >
On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.
Advertisement