Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich in official screenshots

The next generation of Android is here. Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, is bursting with tasty new features including unlocking the phone with a smile, zapping photos to other phones by tapping them together, and updates across the board. Click through our gallery above for all the official pictures.

You can now unlock your phone with your face. The phone saves your phizzog, and recognises you in future to unlock the phone. We can only imagine the japes Jedward could play on each other with that feature.

Even when the phone is locked, you can go straight to a particular app, or see your music playing. If you don't want to answer an incoming phone call, you can simply respond with a text message from a list of set responses -- such as "Can't talk; in a meeting," or, "I told you to stop calling me, you filthy harridan."

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the first phone to feature navigation buttons that appear on the screen, instead of being physical buttons built into the case of the phone. The icons let you go back, return to the home screen or switch to recent apps, choosing from a list of thumbnails.

On the home screens you can resize widgets. Apps can be organised into folders, as on the iPad and iPhone. When you're done with an app, you can flick it off the screen. It's easier to launch and also delete an app, too.

You can take screengrabs, at last, by pressing the volume and power buttons. Handy. Copy and paste is more useful too, as you can move blocks of text. And there's a new font. A new font, people! It's called Roboto, and replaces Droid Sans.

The browser, camera and Gmail have all been improved, and Google+ is now built-in. A spell-checker works across all apps. Google reckons voice control has been beefed up too, but is it a match for Apple's Siri? We'll find out soon enough.

Android Beam is a new feature that finally makes some use of near-field communication (NFC). Used in some countries to pay for things by waving your phone at an NFC till, NFC hasn't yet taken off over here. With Android Beam you can tap two NFC phones together to zap photos or files from one to the other.

Ice Cream Sandwich makes its debut on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and will be updated to other phones soon after. Are you dying for a lick of Ice Cream Sandwich? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below or on our Facebook page.