Google announces Ice Cream Sandwich. Will be available for phones and tablets.

Google has dropped a ton of announcements already at Google I/O 2011 and another big one is that the next version of Android will be called Ice Cream Sandwich. The name we already knew but it was only hinted at it being available for phones and tablets. That hint is now a reality and will feature parts of Honeycomb and Gingerbread.

While most of the details regarding Ice Cream Sandwich are still under wraps, we do know it will be a blend of Gingerbread and Honeycomb. We also know that Google intends this to be an OS that 'runs everything' meaning your phone, your tablet and whatever else comes with Android on it. It will adapt everything intelligently to whatever device it it on so your games will scale with minimal quality lose and things of that nature.

Two new features in Ice Cream Sandwich that were announced are the head-tracking can pick out not just the user’s position but also his features such as your eyes. Secondly, the Virtual Camera Director can track who’s talking in a group and focus on them.

Ice Cream Sandwich is slated for release in Q4 of 2011. It is good to see that fragmentation is being addressed by Google and now everyone can be on an even playing field for the most part, regarding software anyways.