Quick look at Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

An OS goes a very long way in defining the success or failure of a phone, or any computing device for that matter. It’s a symbiotic relationship, as without good software, the hardware is useless and without good hardware, the software can’t really shine. For the past many years, we’ve all loved Symbian as an OS and at any given point, almost all of us have owned at least one S60-based smartphone. It wasn’t the fastest or the prettiest, but we had made our peace with it and conditioned our minds to accept that. It’s only till Apple launched the iOS that we realized there is a better and easier way to use our phones. Then came Android from Google, which was designed to give developers the freedom to go crazy with apps and manufacturers the leeway to customize the OS, the way they saw fit.

Over the years, we’ve seen this OS blossom into a very solid solution and offer support for features that would give even the iOS a run for its money. After many dessert-based updates (Éclair, Froyo, etc), we are now at Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) or Android 4.0. Unlike the earlier updates, which were mostly cosmetic and added a few new features in each cycle, Android 4.0 is an ambitious leap forward as it’s designed for smartphones as well as tablets. Honeycomb is a thing of the past now and from now on all consequent versions of Android will be available for both platforms. The craze to get ICS onto one's phone or tablet is spreading like wildfire. Manufacturers are adding the tag ‘ICS upgradeable’ to all their handsets just to make it more appealing. So, is it just another update or is there something more to it than just a quirky name?

What’s New?

ICS is quite a departure from Gingerbread, as the layout for certain functions have been moved around a bit. If you’ve used a Honeycomb tablet, then you’ll feel a bit more at home, else it’ll take some getting used to. The first noticeable change is the lack of physical or capacitive buttons. Just like Honeycomb, the three navigation buttons are now a part of the display known as the System Bar and will always be present at the bottom, no matter what. This means you will lose a bit of screen space. Older phones with capacitive buttons that receive ICS will not have the System Bar, instead these functions will be mapped to the existing buttons. If the three buttons are only ‘Back’, ‘Home’ and ‘Recent Apps’, then you’re wondering how would I access the ‘Options’ menu? For that, we now have an ‘Action Bar’, denoted by three dots. This can be displayed at the top or at the bottom depending on the app. We didn’t really love this feature, as there’s no fixed place for options and it keeps changing from app to app. Once again, older phones benefit from having a fixed options button.

A fresh new look

You can now access the notification bar from the lock screen itself, so if you have music playing and you need to change the track, you need not unlock the screen. The icons in the notification bar, settings and menu are borrowed from Honeycomb. They also have a very flat look to them as there’s no 3D definition. You’ll see this mostly on the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus S, as most manufacturers will use their own icons. Multitasking once again comes from Honeycomb, showing you the recently used apps along with a thumbnail of the snapshot of the last activity you performed on the app. To close it, you simply swipe it to the left.

Find recent apps easily

The notification bar hasn’t changed and now adds a shortcut to settings. We are really disappointed that Google didn’t add toggle switches for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth etc., by default as it’s extremely handy. Everyone has it, so we wonder what made them skip this feature. The Google search widget is now a prominent fixture on the home screen and does not move, even if you switch screens. This was quite unnecessary to be honest and should have been a widget like before. Speaking of widgets, you can’t access them through the homescreen anymore. They are now part of the apps menu under a separate section. You can now resize the widgets like Gmail, Calendar, etc, but not all of them, like the clock.

Hardware Accelerated UI

One of the reasons why ICS feels so slick and smooth is that everything is hardware accelerated. Google now uses OpenGL ES to render everything from the built-in apps, to the animations and home screens. Even the stock browser is GPU accelerated, which makes it really quick and responsive. ICS also comes with a special set of Developer options, which let you force GPU rendering on third party apps as well. It’s only a matter of time before developers update their apps to take advantage of this properly.

A new spin on stock apps

Having said this, we did notice a drop in performance with Live Wallpapers enabled. There is a very noticeable jerkiness in the animations, whether you’re switching home screens or browsing through apps. Now since the GPU is constantly working in the background, we feel rendering Live Wallpapers is bit much for the PowerVR SGX 540 GPU in the Galaxy Nexus to handle. We’ll know for sure, if it’s just a bug or not, once ICS hits other phones and tablets with more powerful GPUs like the one in Tegra 3.

A smarter browser

The new stock browser is miles ahead of the previous versions. Not only is it GPU accelerated, so opening pages and switching between tabs is quicker, but also has some neat tricks up its sleeve. You now have the option to open an incognito tab, just like Chrome. Web pages viewed in this tab will not appear in your history. Another new feature is Labs. Just like Google Maps, you can now take advantage of some really cool add-ons for the browser. You only get two - Quick Controls and Fullscreen out of which my favourite is Quick Controls. What this does is it that it removes the Status Bar, address bar and fills the entire screen with the web page. If you need to change settings or switch to a tab, simply slide you thumb from either the left or right side of the screen to bring up a half carousel around your thumb. Then you simply select the option you want. It’s a very clever idea and works brilliantly. For once, we can say with confidence that you won’t need a third-party browser.

New and improved browser

Google has also pulled a major overhaul on the keyboard. The layout is similar to the previous ones, but it's a lot more responsive and easy to type on. The two big changes is the error correction and word suggestion, which are lot more accurate this time. As you type along, the auto-complete will suggest words closest to what you’ve typed so far and present you with three suggestions, the closest match being in the middle. If that's the word you want, simply hit space and it will fill it in. To see more words, long press the middle word for other possible matches. Also, if you’re used to typing in chat lingo (shud, tomoro, ystdy, etc) then you’ll get a prompt asking if you want to save that word in the dictionary. All your custom words are saved in the 'Personal Dictionary' in Settings.

Improved text and voice input

You also get a spell checker, which automatically underlines misspelt words, which you can change with a single tap. If you ever get tired of typing, you can activate the speech to text recognition. Here, you can dictate you entire message, which is typed out in real-time. For it to work properly, make sure you select your countries language and yes, India is there as one of the countries. There is a small delay between you actually saying the word and for it to appear on screen, but the important bit is that it’s very accurate. And you don’t have to speak very loud or enunciate very word precisely, just speak the way you normally do.

Changes in the stock apps

Gtalk finally gets multiple account support! You can now sign-in to different Google accounts and be online on all of them at the same time, something which should have been present ages ago. Gmail app has also undergone some few changes. The Inbox icon is now a lot more prominent and there’s a separate icon for labels down at the bottom. You can also have individual widgets for different labels, for each account on the homescreen.

Multiple accounrs in Gtalk has been a long time coming

The phone dialer also gets a cosmetic update, along with Contacts, which is now called People. You can choose to display contacts from selected accounts and other social media sites. The calendar app also features pinch-to-zoom function making it easier to read or add a memo, especially on smaller screens. YouTube remains pretty much the same. The rest of the apps, like the music, video and camera are covered in the Galaxy Nexus review.

New settings menu and other features

The Settings menu has been shuffled around a bit, but most of the features that we saw in Gingerbread make a comeback. Just like Honeycomb, you get a toggle switch for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. An addition here is Data Usage, which shows you how much of data you’ve used over EDGE or 3G. You can also set a data limit and a usage cycle, so you’ll get a warning, if you’re nearing the limit. You can even set the usage warning limit. I found this to be extremely handy and very good addition to the OS. NFC-enabled ICS phones can take advantage of Android Beam, which lets you share data by simply bumping the two phones together. Unfortunately, we didn't have another Galaxy Nexus or a Nexus S to test this out for ourselves.

A very handy addition

Another new feature is Face Unlock,m which basically uses the front camera to unlock the phone using facial recognition. Setting up doesn’t take too long, but make sure when you register your face, you hold the phone at an angle, which you’ll be using on a daily basis, else it won’t work. The Galaxy Nexus is very quick at recognizing and unlocking the phone, thanks to the 1.3MP camera. Even in low light, it was easily able to detect and unlock it in less than 3 seconds. Finally, we have Developer Options, which is only useful, if you you are developer. It’s still fun to play around with, as you have options for forcing 2D hardware acceleration in all apps, show CPU usage, change the scale of Windows animations, etc.

The bottom line

Looking at the big picture, ICS is a kind of a big deal, after all, as it steps up the game and brings the Android experience much closer to iOS, if not on par. Some of the stand-out features that we absolutely love is the new look and feel, hardware acceleration is now everywhere, new app for monitoring data usage, which is big plus, multiple account support in Gtalk. It could be the new fonts or choice of colours, but ICS does feel new; it feels fresh and a lot more polished, than Gingerbread or Honeycomb. Currently it’s only the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S that are enjoying these benefits officially. Manufacturers like HTC and Samsung will also be bringing out updates for existing phones soon, but they’ll obviously be giving it their own treatment, which sadly will dilute some of the flavour of ICS. Nevertheless, it is an update worth looking forward to and in case you’re one of the unlucky ones, who don’t get it, there’s always custom ROMs.

Web Search in 2011 : 10 Things to Look Out

Part-2 : Web Search in 2011

6.Massive growth in contextual PPC model

With the success of Google’s Content Network (now rebranded the Display Network), many publisher sites and shopping aggregators are following with similar paid for listings models, offering their real estate at a price. Although very early stages, none of them have quite mastered a ‘quality score’ of some type making the payment model very much a fixed cost per click (CPC) but still split by vertical.

For advertisers, this is another advertising option that in most cases is a cheaper option. With CPC’s being relatively low it helps spread the risk, so all an advertiser’s budget isn’t just spent with Google. But it does not quite offer the same amount of reach as advertising via one of the search engines or Google’s contextual network.

That said it’s an interesting proposition and one which many advertisers (especially retail and travel) are already exploiting. So far the biggest selling points are the competitive CPCs some of these publisher sites are offering, almost undercutting the search engines. Are they offering something different? And do they have a real chance of cutting into Google’s monopoly of the contextual space? Greenlight thinks so.


7.Instant Previews to stay

With the introduction of Google Instant Previews, search engine users now get to see a site before they arrive at it. This means they will be making important decisions before the site has any chance to engage the viewer with the strength of its content or functionality.

Although Instant Previews usually contain a few highlighted snippets of text as well as the overall screen-grab, those snippets are barely noticeable at present making the previews basically entirely graphical. Consequently if a site design is not up to scratch, it will start to see click through rates (CTRs) dropping, which will have knock on effects on the site’s rankings too.

In addition, CTR optimisation will become its own semi-discipline built around the arrival of Instant Previews and incorporating competitor analysis, title and meta description optimisation, to offer a rounded and compelling package to top ranking sites.


8.Pre-targeting, Re-targeting and Re-marketing to rule

Personalised re-targeting, is the channel that allows advertisers to re-engage with lost customers via personalised banners across the Internet. Some of the biggest players in this market include Criteo, Struq, My Things Media and adGENIE. Even the search engines are giving it a go with Google’s Remarketing or Yahoo! Smart Ads.

Personalised retargeting is quite a unique proposition and twist to display in some ways, to the point whereby dynamic personalised retargeting has been proven to drive increased CTRs and conversion rates from what is considered the typical 0.005% for traditional display versus personalised re-targeting which normally starts off around 0.8% CTR and has been known to reach as high as 5% CTR.

The dynamic nature and flexibilities of re-targeting mean advertisers can optimise their ads in real-time, therefore responding to what their consumers really want and getting the most out of their investment. Again this is another example of display marketing taking on the qualities of paid search - and making it work for the advertiser.

“Combining our earlier prediction (Display marketing will mirror much of what is search in practice) with the re-targeting model sees search marketing expanding its remit within the online space - claiming more investment, and presenting more opportunities to close the loop outside the existing buying cycle,” says Kimuyu.


9.Quick Response codes to replace Search

Some time ago we started to see the advent of search based call to actions in ATL advertising, where an advert ends with the line “search widgets online” rather than a website address.

Greenlight predicts that in 2011, QR codes will usurp search calls to action in display advertising. This is probably just as well given the hash most companies seem to make of search based calls to action when it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO), often failing to achieve or even try to rank naturally for the keyword they are encouraging people to search for.

So what’s a QR code? A QR code is a “matrix” or 2D barcode that can be read by many mobile phones. It has a URL (among other things) encoded within it, letting advertisers replace the whole affair with a simple point and click.


10.Google may roll out comparison ads

Over the last year, Google introduced Comparison Ads into the mix (part of the AdWords programme). After a successful trial in the US, Google rolled out the proposition in the UK at the beginning of 2010.

Invited advertisers were able to set a target cost per acquisition (CPA) against a group of specific keywords and not have to worry about inflating CPCs as a result of a poor quality score or aggressive competition. This programme alone not only assists Google in monetising its excess inventory. It also allows the advertiser to have confidence in securing a positive return on investment (ROI).

Now almost a year on, it makes sense for Google to push this proposition out across the entire Financial sector and most likely into Travel.

However, what does this mean for the aggregators, as Google is effectively taking a punt at their business model? Furthermore, with some of the aggregators being Google’s biggest clients, is Google shooting itself in the foot by trying to recreate its own version of this market? It remains to be seen.