Ice Cream Sandwich Android: 'Roboto' System Font Features

By Elton Jones, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, October 20, 2011

The new operating system unveiled by Samsung and Google yesterday, Ice Cream Sandwich, comes with a new system font feature called "Roboto."

Roboto is the new graphics foundation used to sport cleaner looking fonts on the Galaxy Nexus smartphone. This new system font allows the user of the system to enjoy a super clean typeface on Ice Cream Sandwich.

Samsung and Google promise that Roboto will give the OS’s display the appearance of a professional magazine layout.

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The system features a new target sensing lock screen unlock. It also allows the user to add whatever apps they wish to their favorite’s tray.

Roboto even enhances some of the Galaxy Nexus' other features. It is able to improve the picture quality of the Calender application, which helps make it easier to read for users.

Some analysts and reviewers have tried out the new font and said Roboto is far better than some of the current system fonts.

Liam Spradlin, writer for the website Android Police, had this to say about Roboto: "Roboto is a sans-serif font, keeping things simple and smooth. Its characters have a pleasing roundness, and are spaced rather nicely, making e-mails, clocks, and menus easy on the eyes, and, in the words of one presenter, 'a pleasure to read'."

Liam also went on to say that, "Roboto may be a small touch, but it's just one of the numerous new additions to Android that make Ice Cream Sandwich the the best mobile OS Google has yet cooked up."

Roboto, along with a host of other specs and features, make up the complete design of the Galaxy Nexus smartphone.

The Ice Cream Sandwich OS was announced yesterday at Google and Samsung's joint event called "Mobile Unpacking."

Google’s Matias Duarte explained his company's decision to create Roboto: "How do we make Android enchanting? We start at the beginning with the words. Meet Roboto. It’s a totally new typeface for Android. Modern, yet approachable, and it was built from scratch for high definition paper density displays."