Roboto, Android’s now default font as of Ice Cream Sandwich, is a new-from-the-ground-up font, designed to be sleek, elegant, highly-readable on mobile devices… and the opening wedge of Google’s assault on Apple’s position as the hippest interface around. The good news is that, since it was released as part of the Android 4.0 SDK (Software Developer Kit), you can get Roboto now and install it on your current Android phone or tablet.

The font — really a set of several typefaces for Regular, Bold and Italic, in Condensed and non-Condensed version, each in its own .ttf file — can be downloaded easily. If your phone is rooted, then you can simply take the font files and place them in your /system/fonts folder (renaming whichever versions of the Roboto typefaces you want to use to replace the two system typefaces — DroidSans.ttf and DroidSans-Bold.ttf).

Make sure and back up your existing fonts in case Roboto doesn’t work out for you. Your phone may also support an easier method for changing the system font — some Samsung phones support Monotype’s FlipFont for example — in which case you can simply follow your phone’s instructions. Alternatively you can use an application like Font Changer to install Roboto for you. Note that Font Changer requires root access and you will need to have Busybox installed as well, but the process is quite straightforward.

If you like your fonts to be compressed (displayed with the letters tightly grouped), then you can experiment with using Roboto-Condensed to replace DroidSans, and Roboto-CondensedBold to replace DroidSans-Bold. Otherwise Roboto-Regular is a good replacement for DroidSans, and Roboto-Bold is a good replacement for DroidSans-Bold. Whichever set you choose, for most users who’ve tried it, the result is a nice upgrade in readability. Roboto appears to create smoother curves at small sizes, making it easier on the eyes as well.

If you’re not afraid of using your device’s recovery manager to install .zip files, thanks to xda-developers’ conributor myn, there is a zip file containing the fonts that will install them as your system font available here. As always, the update may not work on your phone, so safety demands making a backup before experimenting.

As you can see from the sample above, the Roboto font provides a subtle but definitely visible difference from the Droid family of typefaces used in current versions of Android. From my experiments here I’m a fan of using it sooner rather than later — and bear in mind, even if you don’t like Roboto, you can actually use Font Changer to use any TTF font on your Android phone, including the Ubuntu font, if that tickles your fancy.