Google's new Ice Cream Sandwich OS looks great, but Google needs to get updates and the Android Market under control for it to succeed.

Google's Ice Cream Sandwich OS . But so far, I haven't heard of it addressing Android's most pressing problems: the fragmentation of versions and the horrible discovery problems in the Android Market, which have prevented Android tablets from selling. In fact, the hot new OS may just make matters worse.

On the surface, Android 4.0 looks like it could finally solve the split between phone and tablet OSes that has so held back proper development of Android tablets. Currently, you get a choice between two kinds of tablets with Android: cheap tablets running an ugly, blown-up version of a phone OS designed for smaller screens, and higher-end tablets that lack apps because there's no obvious way to find Honeycomb tablet apps in the Android Market. (There's a short "featured for tablets" section, but if that's really all the tablet apps out there, Honeycomb is a total failure.)

Google is pitching Ice Cream Sandwich as the end to the Gingerbread/Honeycomb, phone/tablet split. But Ice Cream Sandwich could make the split worse if updates to existing devices go as slowly as Android updates always have. That means we'll now have three major Android strains for developers to juggle. Without additional guidelines and tools for filtering apps in the Market, downloading apps on Android—especially if you're looking for apps for the latest devices—will be very frustrating.

Google's Android honcho Andy Rubin says that updates will start to happen within "weeks," according to Slashgear, but I don't trust him. Google right now has zero credibility on the topic of updates, as they've failed to deliver updates to consumers in a timely fashion for every version of Android so far. Expect Google to blame OEMs and carriers if the updates don't happen, but that's just buck-passing.

We also need to swiftly do away with Honeycomb and to establish an easy way to tell the difference between small-screen and "HD" screen apps, and I haven't seen a word from Google about how they're going to do that.

Rubin seems not to understand the problem here. Quoted on ThisIsMyNext.com, he says there shouldn't be tablet-specific apps, and that "the Twitter phone app runs fine on a tablet." No, it doesn't. The Twitter phone app is dog-ugly on a tablet, with a vast amount of useless white space, because the UI designers assumed smaller screens. When I review Android tablets and try to download apps, a solid percentage of those apps end up with spaced-out UIs or with the whole app appearing in a tiny black box in the middle of the screen.

If that's the future of Android tablet apps, the whole category is dead in the water.

Microsoft Gets It Right

Google needs to look to Microsoft as an example of how to get updates right. Compared to the grinding misery of the Android non-update schedule, Microsoft's transition from Windows Phone 7 to Mango is going pretty smoothly.

Like Google, Microsoft has to deal with different OEMs and get its software approved by carriers. Like Google, Microsoft has to deal with different form factors—phones with physical keyboards and without, for instance.

Yes, Apple gets it right too, but that's a little boring; Apple has only one OEM (itself) and a handful of models, so it's much easier to push out updates to iPhones and iPads.

Earlier this year, Google and its OEMs formed a consortium to pledge to deliver prompt updates, but absolutely zero concrete work has come out of that group. Every single U.S. Windows Phone will update to Mango within weeks. Two-year-old iPhones can get iOS 5. But owners of Android phones and tablets just a few months old have no clue when, or whether their gadgets will get Ice Cream Sandwich (or for that matter, sometimes still even Gingerbread.)

Microsoft keeps its Windows Phone line down to one screen resolution and chipset, and doesn't allow manufacturers to skin the OS. I don't want to see Google take on the first requirement, as competition between chip manufacturers has been a major force driving Android's advances. But even if one chipset at a time got Android updates, it would still be a major step forward.

If manufacturer skins are really stopping updates, it may finally be time for Google to find a way to punish OEMs that can't keep up with the pace of change. Google likes to trumpet its openy-ness, but the company has always blessed and punished OEMs by giving or withholding the Android Market and Gmail apps that are necessary to have a decent Android device. Google needs to set a time limit for OEMs to implement changes.

Ice Cream Sandwich looks great. So when can we get it, how can we find apps for it, and how can app developers address the widest variety of Android devices easily? That's what Google needs to answer clearly and concisely.