[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2GE9HbcPAM&w=560&h=349]

At the Android Developers Conference, Chet Haase and Romain Guy, senior software engineers at Google who worked on the new 4.0 version of Android, code-named Ice Cream Sandwich, showed off some of their work. To an absolutely packed audience of eager developers, the two gave a 20-minute walkthrough of the new mobile operating system. Here’s my video capture of that presentation.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoWNSsiBqXI&w=560&h=349]

What were was Haase's favorite features in the new version? The ones he worked on, of course--the hardware acceleration and improved animation. Listen to Haase talk about what developers will be able to do with the new flexible animation.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ytuB2ekVGI&w=560&h=349]

Here's my interview with Romain Guy asking the same question. Like Haase, Guy’s favorite new Android additions are the graphics and animation framework. For example, Guy said, now it’s extremely easy to animate any property. Other animations Guy likes are the variety of layout transitions, but more importantly he is excited about the endless number of APIs; for example, the much-asked-about calendar API, which allows developers to send events directly to the user’s calendar.