iOS5 Not Smarter Than Ice Cream Sandwich?

Apple’s latest operating system, iOS 5 has attracted a lot of buyers for iPhone 4S with its store of more than 200 new apps, which include notification, multitasking, iCloud, widgets, Web browsing and camera boost.

Apple released iOS 5 last week, and now the operating system has new competition after Google introduced Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich on Wednesday.

The Ice Cream Sandwich comes with an improved keyboard, notification and more interactive widgets. We created a new font that's optimized for HD displays and eliminated all hardware buttons in favor of adaptable software buttons, said the Android team in a Google blog post.

Before you decide to lay your hands on the iOS or Android devices, here’s a comparison of the apps:

Notification Center:

Apple has introduced Notification Center in iOS 5 which includes the appearance of incoming notifications at the top of the screen. Android users were already familiar with notifications appearing at the top bar showing time, network conditions, Bluetooth, battery state, GPS and other icons. With the new Ice Cream Sandwich version, Google has updated the notification app. Users can pull down the notifications window from lock screen. It also allows users to flick away less important notifications and save the more important ones. Google has added another new app, Recent Apps list, which gives a list of thumbnail images of all your running apps and lets you jump from one image to another by tapping your finger.

Voice Action:

Apple has a new voice input-based digital assistant for its devices, Siri, which functions quiet similarly to Android’s Voice Action. The user can speak Web searches, notes, messages and navigation. The Android Voice Command in the Ice Cream Sandwich version allows you to activate voice-input service by just talking to the phone, which doesn’t work for Siri. However, Siri has personalization features, which enables it to process a lot of natural language requests and answer it accordingly. For example, you can ask Siri to remind you to pick your laundry after work or ask if it’s cold outside.

Keyboard:

Android’s new keyboard in Ice Cream Sandwich has a new design, inline spell check, a new way to copy, paste and even drag text for easy manipulation. The iOS 5 allows iPad users to split the virtual keyboard in half with their thumbs for easier tablet typing.

Cloud Sync:

Cloud Computing is not new to Google. They have been storing data in the cloud for quite some time now. Apple is trying to match up with Android’s growth by adding iCloud, which allows syncing of apps across all devices.

Web Browser:

Ice Cream Sandwich has improved browser ability with new features such as Google Chrome bookmark sync, incognito mode and the ability to save full Web pages for offline readers. In iOS 5, Apple overhauled its Safari browser with tabbed browsing, a Reading List to save articles for later reading on any iOS device (thanks to iCloud) and the Reader, which removes ads and other clutter for articles. The iOS 5 does not allow offline reading.