Unwrapping a new Ice Cream Sandwich: Android 4.0 reviewed

Google's Android 4, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), debuts later this month on the much-anticipated Galaxy Nexus smartphone. This major new version of Android includes a redesigned user interface that promises a uniform experience across tablet and smartphone form factors, and it delivers new features and a wide range of improvements across the core application stack.

We already gave you a look at the Galaxy Nexus earlier this month in a hands-on review of the hardware. Now it's time to take a close look at the operating system and the ICS user experience.

The look and feel of the new interface is largely inherited from Honeycomb, the previous tablet variant of Android. ICS carries over Honeycomb's Tron-inspired "holographic" visual style, but the design has been refined to work well on multiple screen sizes.