Google today explained in a blog post that the next version of Android, called Ice Cream Sandwich, is due very soon. In order to prepare application developers for its arrival, Google published a tutorial for developers on how to port their Honeycomb apps to Ice Cream Sandwich and vice versa. Google explained, “Although Honeycomb remains tablets-only, the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) release will support big screens, small screens, and everything in between. This is the way Android will stay from now on: the same version runs on all screen sizes.” Google said that developers who have already optimized their applications for handsets (and haven’t updated them to support tablets) won’t have to take any steps.
Developers who have built their applications solely for Honeycomb tablets, however, will need to update their applications to work on the smaller screens of handsets. Moving forward, all applications developed for Honeycomb must be compatible with a device running Ice Cream Sandwich, which could take any number of different forms. Google said the software developers kit for Ice Cream Sandwich is coming soon, and it will offer a full set of tools to develop for Android 3.2.
