My OperaHOLO, NURSE!
By seaempty. Wednesday, January 4, 2012 8:17:40 PM
I love the look of Ice Cream Sandwich. Its neon glow, and simple lines are gorgeous, and it looks unique. My concern is that when other manufacturers get a hold of it (HTC, I'm looking at you, with your dated Sense overlay).It seems that the Android devs are aware of this, and is addressing it. In a recent blog post, they confirmed that an unmodified ICS "Holo" theme must be included on all devices running Android 4.0.
We’ve made the inclusion of the unmodified Holo theme family a compatibility requirement for devices running Android 4.0 and forward. If the device has Android Market it will have the Holo themes as they were originally designed.
This standardization goes for all of the public Holo widget styles as well. The Widget.Holo styles will be stable from device to device, safe for use as parent styles for incremental customizations within your app.
I'm not sure how manufacturers will react to that, but I guess they're all on board, and it remains to be seen how unmodified "unmodified" will actually be. The devs do go on to say that they've made it easier for manufacturers to create and implement their own device themes. I think given the choice, however, I'd always opt for a "pure" ICS experience.
And to be fair to HTC, having received the Honeycomb update on my HTC Flyer yesterday, I'm impressed with how they've integrated Sense and Android 3.0, managing to keep the personalities of both.
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