There was no way I was going to be up at 3am to watch the live webcast so didn't get caught up in the pomp and ceremony but I did make sure that the first thing I did was check live blogs and some hands on footage.

Gingerbread was such a low key update to Froyo and from the end user perspective was quite underwhelming - ICS needed to do much better.

As I have commented elsewhere, ICS visually is largely Honeycomb on a phone and I was worried that it wouldn't offer anything really new.

Size IS important

It's clear to see that Google is betting the family silver on large screens - a good differentiator to the iPhone. Resizable widgets, magazine style layout of contacts, two line message preview in Gmail etc. Although it's been said there should be no reason this won't run on any Gingerbread device I wouldn't expect anything with less than a 4 inch screen to get it - the amount of information on screen will be reduced.

One word I've seen used a lot in connection with ICS is 'enhancements' which, to me conjours up images of minor changes. ICS promises something new but in general just gives us a Honeycomb coat of paint.

One thing I immediately thought is that the UI in certain apps is starting to look a bit like Windows Phone 7 in certain areas, anyone else?

Say cheese!

Just as with the iPhone the camera app has got a lot of love - boy, did it need it - but even then we hear reports that the built-in filters are unimpressive leaving us still waiting for the Android Instagram app.

Multi-tasking has been given the Honeycomb treatment with a few nice touches but again will perform best on a larger screen.

Catch-up

Android fan boys have been accusing Apple of playing catch-up with the iPhone but there are a few instances where Android is doing exactly the same: folder creation by dragging one shortcut on to another is directly lifted from iOS and you have to wonder if Apple have a patent on that.

Much was made by some about full OS level hardware acceleration in ICS but I haven't seen any reference to that in the live blogs (is it in there?) This too is playing catch-up with the iPhone.

In summary

ICS is a refresh that Android badly needed but is it enough? The OS seems to have a new design mandate with context sensitive buttons at the bottom of apps but is this consistent? Will developers be encouraged to adopt this policy to avoid a fragmented experience and will they, therefore, be shipping different versions of their API so that apps don't then look out of place on older versions of Android?

ICS is definitely an overdue evolution but not a massive one in my eyes.