Comparison of Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) vs Android 4.

0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

Android 3.1, also known as Honeycomb was officially released on March 2011, and Android
4.0 also known as Ice cream sandwich was officially released in October 2011
Android 3.1 was specially designed to be used on tablets while Android 4.0 was designed to be
used in both smart phones and tablets
Both Android 3.1 and Android 4.0 are optimised for large screens
Android 4.0 further introduces the Roboto typeface more suitable for high resolution screens
this is not available in Android 3.1
Both Android 3.1 and Android 4.0 have soft keys for Back, Home and Recent Apps
Both Android 3.1 and Android 4.0 have customizable home screens that can be customized by
the user with shortcuts to applications and widgets
In both versions of Android, the systems bar shows a list of recent applications and have
thumbnails of applications
Performing actions such as voice search and composing text messages via voice input are
available in both Android 3.1 and Android 4.0
In Android 4.0, voice input has been further improved to give an open microphone experience
In Android 4.0 (Ice cream sandwich), users can answer calls, see notifications and browse
through music if they are listening to music without unlocking the screen while in Android 3.1,
without unlocking the screen one can only answer calls
Android 4.0 offers the ability to unlock the phone with face recognition but a similar feature is
not available with Android 3.1
In Android 3.1 and 4.0, the browser allows tabbed browsing. Both browsers have better
performance in-terms of rendering non mobile sites
The camera application on Android 4.0 introduces Live Effects, which can replace the
background of images and video, while they are being captured. A similar feature is not available
on Android 3.1





Android 3.0 Honeycomb
Latest released version Android 3.2
Android 3.0 New User Features
1. New UI holographic UI newly designed for large screen displays with content
focused interaction, the UI is backward compatible, applications designed for
earlier versions can be used with new UI.
2. Refined multitasking
3. Rich notification, no more popups
4. System bar at the bottom of the screen for system status, notification and it
accomodates navigation buttons, as like in Google Chrome.
5. Customizable homescreen (5 homescreens) and dynamic widgets for 3D
experience
6. Action bar for application control for all applications
7. Redesigned keyboard for larger screen, keys are reshaped and repositioned and
new keys added such as Tab key. button in system bar to switch between text/voice
input mode
8. Improvement to text selection, copy and paste; very close to what we do in
computer.
9. Buil in support for Media/Picture Transfer Protocol you can instantly sync
media files through USB cable.
10. Connect full keyboard over USB or Bluetooth
11. Improved Wi-Fi connectivity
12. New support for Bluetooth tethering you can connect more types of devices
13. Improved browser for efficient browsing and better browsing experience using
the large screen some of the new features are:
- multiple tabbed browsing instead of windows,
- incognito mode for anonymous browsing.
- single unified view for Bookmarks and History.
- multi-touch support to JavaScript and plugins
- improved zoom and viewport model, overflow scrolling, support for fixed
positioning
14. Redesigned camera application for larger screen
- quick access to exposure, focus, flash, zoom, etc.
- built-in support for time- lapse video recording
- gallery application for full screen mode viewing and easy access to thumbnails
15. Redesigned contacts applications features for larger screen
- new two-pane UI for contacts applications
- improved formatting for international phone numbers based on home country
- contact information view in card like format for easy reading and editing
16. Redesigned Email appliations
- two-pane UI for viewing and organizing mails
- sync mail attachments for later viewing
- track emails using email widgets in the home screen
New Developer Features
1. New UI Framework to fragment and combine activities in different ways to
create richer and more interactive applications
2. Redesigned UI Widgets for larger screen and new holographic UI theme
- developers can quickly add new types of content to relevant applications and can
interact with users in new ways
- new types of widgets included such as 3D stack, search box, date/time picker,
number picker, calendar, popup menu
3. Action Bar at the top of the screen can be customized by developers according to
application
4. A new builder class to create notifications that include large and small icons,
title, a priority flag, and any properties already available in previous versions
5. Developers can use mulitiselect, clipboard and drag and drop features to offer
users more enjoyable gaming experience
6. Performance improvement to 2D and 3D graphics
- new animation framework
- new hardware accelerated OpenGL renderer to improve the performance of 2D
graphics based applications
- Renderscript 3D graphics engine for accelerated graphics operations and create
high performance 3D effects in applications.
7. Support for multicore processor architectures support symmetric
mulitprocessing in multicore environments, even an application designed for single
core environment will enjoy the performance boost.
8. HTTP Live streaming media framwork supports most of the HTTP Live
streaming specification.
9. Pluggable DRM framework for applications to manage protected content,
Android 3.0 offers unified API for simplified management of protected contents.
10. Built-in support for MTP/PTP over USB
11. API support for Bluetooth A2DP and HSP profiles
For Enterprises
Device administration applications can include new types of policies, such as
policies for encrypted storage, password expiration, password history, and
requirement of complex characters for passwords.
Android 3.1 New Features
1. Refined UI
- Launcher animation optimized for faster, smoother transition to/from app list
- Adjustments in color, positioning and text
- Audible feedback for improved accessibility
- Customizable touch-hold interval
- Navigation to/from five home screens made easy. Touching the home button in
system bar will return you to most frequently used home screen.
- Improved view of internal storage used by apps
2. Support for more varieties of input devices such as keyboards, mouse, trackballs,
game controllers and accessories such as digital cameras musical instrument, kiosks
and card readers.
- Any type of external keyboards, mouse and trackballs can be connected
- Most of the PC joysticks, game controllers and game pads can be connected
except for some proprietary controllers
- More than one device can be attached simultaneously via USB and/or Blutooth
HID
- No configuration or drivers required
- Support for USB accessories as host to launch related applications, if application
not available the accessories can give the URL to download the application.
- Users can interact with application to control the accessories.
3. Recent Apps list is expandable to include larger number of apps. The list will
have all the apps in use and recently used apps.
4. Customizable Home screen
- Re-sizable home screen widgets. widgets can be expanded in both vertically and
horizontally.
- Updated home screen widget for Email app gives quick access to emails
5. New high performance Wi-Fi lock added for uninterrupted connectivity even
when the device screen is off. This will be useful for streaming long duration
music, video and voice services.
- HTTP proxy for each individual Wi-Fi access point can be configured. This will
be used by the browser when communicating with the networks. Other Apps also
may use this.
- Configuration is made easy by touch-hold of the access point in the setting
- Back up and restore the user defined IP and proxy setting
- Support for Preferred Network Offload (PNO), which works in the background
and conserves battery power in case where Wi-Fi connectivity needed for longer
time.
Improvements to Standard Applications
6. Improved Browser app new features added and UI improved
- Quick Controls UI is extended and redesigned. Users can use it to view
thumbnails of open tabs, to close the active tabs, access overflow menu for instant
access to settings and many other.
- Supports CSS 3D, animations, and CSS fixed positioning to all sites.
- Supports embedded playback of HTML5 video content
- Save the webpage locally for offline viewing with all styling and imaging
- Improved auto login UI let users quickly sign in to Google sites and manage
access when multiple users sharing the same device
- Support for plugins that use hardware accelerated rendering
- Page Zoom performance improved
7. Gallery apps improved to support Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP).
- Users can connect external cameras over USB and import pictures to Gallery with
one touch
- The imported pictures are copied to local storages and it will show the balance
space available.
8. Calender grids are made larger for better readability and accurate targeting
- Controls in data picker are redesigned
- Calender list controls can be hidden to create larger viewing area for grids
9. Contacts app allows full text search making it quicker to locate contacts and the
results are shown from all the fields stored in the contact.
10. Email app improved
- When replying or forwarding HTML message the improved Email app sends both
plain text and HTML bodies as multi-part mime message.
- Folder prefixes for IMAP accounts are made easier to define and manage
- Prefetches emails from server only when the device is connected to a Wi-Fi
access point. This is done to conserve battery power and minimize data usage
- Improved home screen widget gives quick access to emails and users can cycle
through email labels with the touch of the Email icon at the top of the widget
11. Improved Enterprise support
- Administrators can use the configurable HTTP proxy for each Wi-Fi access point
- Allows encrypted storage card device policy with emulated storage cards and
encrypted primary storage

Android 3.2 New Features
1. Optimization for wider range of tablet devices.
2. A pixel scaled compatibility zoom mode for fixed size apps offers better
viewing experience for apps that are not designed to run on larger devices.
3. Media sync direct from SD card
4. Extended screen support API for developers to manage application UI across
wide range of tablet devices.