Ice Cream Sandwich apps

The new version of Google Android which will come with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and other future Android phones and tablets comes with a ton of new features. Google touched on some of the highlights at a press event last night, including a facial recognition app for unlocking your phone, improved speech-to-text, and a vastly improved contacts app called People.

But there are also a number of improvements that went unmentioned during the launch event, and Google’s Dan Morrill has posted a few of his favorites.

One of the coolest is the ability to completely disable an app on your phone or tablet. This will prevent it from using any system resources and it will even remove the icon from the app launcher until you decide to re-enable the app. This even works on bloatware that comes preloaded on your device.

You won’t be able to uninstall some bloatware to free up storage space. But you can prevent Verizon, Samsung, or anyone else from eating up unnecessary RAM or mobile data with an app that you don’t really want to use.

Morill also mentions a few other improvements including an updated Settings screen which is easier to navigate, improved camera controls, a better download manager, support for audio effects, and the ability to fully encrypt all the data on a smartphone. Up until now full-disk encryption was only available for tablets running Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb and up.

via Android Central

Brad Linder

Brad Linder is editor of Liliputing and Mobiputing. He's been tinkering with mobile tech for decades and writing about it since...