Ice Cream Sandwich To Support USB Game Controllers

For now, only users of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play are really getting anything resembling a traditional video gaming experience on their smartphones (unless your idea of classic gaming involves rubbing your thumbs on your TV or picking it up and tilting it from side-to-side), but it looks like that's all about to change. Google's Romain Guy just announced that Android 4.0 Ice CreamSandwich will support USB gamepads, letting the rest of us get in on the action.

Guy notes the support is in Ice Cream Sandwich, and confirms it will definitely work on the Galaxy Nexus. You'll obviously need an adapter to get the full-sized USB connector on your gamepad plugged into your phone's Micro USB port, but that's a small price to pay for having access to some solid, responsive gaming controls.

We've heard about efforts similar to this before, letting wireless PlayStation controllers work on your Android phone, and Honeycomb has been able to pull this kind of thing off on tablets, but this will mark its arrival as a feature built-in to Android for smartphones. 

MuscleNerd: Untethered FastRa1n iOS 5 Jailbreak a Scam

Jailbreaks for iOS 5 are getting better and better, with the latest redsn0w now able to work its magic on your iPhone over twice as quickly. Don't let your expectations run away with you though, as we're still in tethered jailbreak land, with no ETA on an untethered option. That's not stopping unscrupulous souls from fleecing a little cash off the gullible, causing the iPhone Dev Team'sMuscleNerd to speak out in warning against one such scam tool.

MuscleNerd sent out a tweet in regards to claims that FastRa1n can install an untethered jailbreak on iOS 5 devices. Anyone paying for access to the supposed tool is just wasting their money, according to him, and the iPhone Dev Team will be confirming the presence of an actual iOS 5 untethered jailbreak if and when one arises. They're obviously working hard on such an effort, and all us non-devs should just relax and enjoy our tethered jailbreak for the time being. 

Google Voice Returns To App Store After Week-Long Hiatus

Last Saturday, Apple users were just settling-in to their first weekend with their new iPhone 4Shandsets, when they may have noticed an odd absence from the App Store: Google Voice was nowhere to be found. We're huge fans of the service, so it's easy for us to imagine plenty of users setting-up their iPhone 4S models for the first time, getting them configured with all the apps they'll need, and scratching their heads as to whyGoogle Voice was nowhere to be found. While they've been without the app all week, it makes its triumphant return to the App Store today.

So where was Google Voice? A nasty bug in the app was causing it to crash on systems running iOS 5.0, and it was deemed so severe that Google swiftly pulled it from the App Store, rather than leave a buggy app available as it crafted a fix.

Today that fix is ready, in the form of Google Voice 1.3.1.1891, replacing the 1.3.0.1771 edition where the problem was first noticed. Go snag it now from the App Store if you've been waiting all week. 

Verizon Officially Confirms Plans To Carry Galaxy Nexus

When discussing the possibilities of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus coming to Sprint, we also mentioned some of the lingering uncertainties surrounding its launch on Verizon LTE. While that seemed like a lock at first, even with claims that it would be a carrier exclusive, we didn't get confirmation at the phone's launch event, and communications from Samsung this week haven't helped to clear things up any. We're still left with questions, but today Verizon at last officially announced its intent to offer the Galaxy Nexus on its 4G LTE network.

Unfortunately, Verizon doesn't mention anything about an exclusive, nor any specific release date, so those questions are left up-in-the-air. What this does amount to is confirmation that the carrier will at least be among launch-day carriers. It seemed pretty certain that this would be the case, especially with the discovery earlier this week of an image of the Galaxy Nexus featuring Verizon's 4G LTE logo (it was the phone used for the time-lapse beach demos for the launch event), but the fact that Verizon had yet to make its own statement was starting to get some folks worried. Now, they can breathe a sigh of relief. 

What to Buy: Nexus S with Ice Cream Sandwich or Galaxy Nexus

With the recent announcement of Ice CreamSandwich, pocketnow readers are asking themselves whether they should shell out the money for the new Galaxy Nexus, or if they should wait until the Nexus S gets it's Android 4.0 update (which we're sure it will).

Once the new Galaxy Nexus comes, it's older sibling, the Nexus S, should see a price-drop. Theoretically you could pick yourself up a Nexus Safter the new phone goes on sale and save a bunch of change... then simply wait for the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update to come to the Nexus S and get most of the benefits of the new OS.

(In Sweden, where pocketnow reader Juraj lives, the Nexus S is currently selling for half the price that we expect the Galaxy Nexus to go for when its released.)

It's a good theory, and one we suspect could save you a bunch of money, but what would you be missing if you opted for that route?

First of all, the Nexus S is still a fairly powerful phone, so speed probably won't be an issue. It's a single-core processor, so it won't be as fast as the new Galaxy Nexus with its 1.2GHz cores humming away inside, but it should still run ICS at a reasonable clip.

Next, screen size and resolution isn't going to be the same between the two, but we don't think you'll mind.

You won't have the new, fancy barometer inside the Nexus S, so GPS fixes won't be sped up, and you won't have the possibility of future apps that could use it for weather forecasting and alerts. Since you don't have that now, it's likely something you won't miss.

The Nexus S still has NFC built-in, so all the new tap-to-beam sharing should work -- in addition to the current NFC tricks, like Google Wallet.

Of course, you won't have the cool new "curved" phone that the Galaxy Nexus promises, but the Nexus Sdoes have a curved front, so at least you'll get some of the "curvy" experience.

So, yes, waiting for the Galaxy Nexus to be released, then picking up a Nexus S for a killer deal will likely give you most of the new ICS experience while saving your pocket-book some hard-earned green.

You'll just have to be patient for the price to drop, and for the ICS upgrade to come to the Nexus S.