Transform your Android 2.3 Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich Completely (Well, almost)

The recently unveiled Ice Cream Sandwich has been gathering a lot of interests from Android enthusiasts and people are drooling to get their hands over it. But, except for the Galaxy Nexus, it’ll take quite some time to reach other super-phones, either officially or through developers.

For those who want to get a taste of ICS on their phones right now, here’s a short guide to transform your Android 2.x into Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich:

ICS Theme for Launchers

Ice Cream Sandwich Theme supports launchers like ADW, LauncherPro and GoLauncher. It comes with a one-click installer theme along with the dock, icons and includes several cool wallpapers.

Further, it also supports Folder Organizer and Desktop Visualizer, using which you can get the ICS google search widget as well. I’ll explain that below, keep scrolling.

The Google search widget, clock and the status bar in the screenshot are a part of the CM7 theme covered below.

CyanogenMod 7 Theme

When combined with the launcher theme, this CM7 theme will almost make your android identical to ICS. The screenshot above is a combination of both of these, the google search widget, the clock and the status bar being a part of it.

Further, it brings a lot of UI changes like the transparent notification bar, few setting icons, a cool bluish color to the theme and lots more.

ICS Themed Launcher

The ICS launcher is almost identical to the Android 4.0 user interface and the above launcher theme, having virtual buttons and an app drawer like it’s original counterpart.

Though, it’s not yet complete yet. The virtual buttons don’t work properly. The multi-tasking key, which is supposed to show thumbnails of currently running application, only shows some pre-defined apps, the back button does nothing and home button shows a preview of home-screens But still, it’s amazing to flaunt.

Boot Animation (root required)

Now, we’ll be replacing the boot animation. This is a leaked animation file from the Galaxy Nexus. First of all, download the boot animation file according to your screen resolution:

Instructions for flashing it:

• Download the boot animation file from the links given above and store it in your SD card.
• Rename it to “bootanimation.zip” and Copy it.
• Using a file explorer with root capabilities, browse to system/media (or system/customize/resource, data/local depending on the ROM you’re using).
• Paste it there to replace the original bootanimation.zip with the ICS boot animation.
• Reboot your device.
• Congrats!

MIUI Users

When you’re having MIUI, it’s so damn easy to replace boot-screens. Download the .mtz file given below and use it:

Lock-Screen

ICS features a re-designed ring lock screen, similar to that honeycomb. You can get this on your phone either by using Widgetlocker or getting a CM7 theme for it. Download links are given below and the QR code is for widgetlocker.

Status Bar (without root)

If you’re not having Cyanogenmod 7 on your phone, here’s a way to get the status bar on any other ROM as well. Get Super Status Bar from the market and use the ICS theme provided.

Miscellany

Galaxy Nexus Ringtones

MyDroidWorld, an Android dedicated forum has got all the ringtones as a leak from the Galaxy Nexus. You’ll have to register on the forums, though it’ll only take few minutes. Get it here.

For using them, move them to “system/media/audio” or in the “media/audio” (you might have to create it manually) directory on the root of SD.

Roboto Font

Android 4.0 has introduced a new font-face, “Roboto” to replace Droid-Sans which looks quite good. Download and install Font Changer from the market. Then, download the font-face from fontand store it to the “.fontchanger” folder:

Note that, it only works with TTF fonts.

Icons

A XDA member, l0st.prophet has posted a full icon pack at the forum, extracted from the ICS SDK. You can use them as an icon replacement in launchers (or whatever else):

HDPI = High DPI, MDPI = Medium DPI, XHDPI = Extra High DPI. All these terms are related to icons’ quality.

ICS Themed Widgets

This is a theme for widgets that turn them into the Ice Cream Sandwich dark theme. You’ll require Android Pro Widgets application for this: