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08/08/2012

Google Now Fully Ported to Ice Cream Sandwich

Google Now Fully Ported to Ice Cream Sandwich:
Jelly Bean has been a pretty popular headline since it’s announcement and hasn’t stopped being a popular headline. Everyone’s wondering when they’ll get it, what it will looks like and et cetera. Google Now has been one of the most discussed and a pretty popular headline of Jelly Bean’s update changelog since they first announced Android 4.1. The service was only available to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean users until now. It still is only available to Jelly Bean users and is now also available to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich users in a back door sort of way. Many people have talked about Google Now’s fantastic interface on a number of different occasions, it’s ease of use, superb functionality and it’s top of the line Voice search function which has already been claimed to be better than Siri on a number of occasions. When it comes down to it though, very few people have had the chance to really test the “mobile personalized search application” to this point.

Thanks to the efforts of the XDA community and developers in all their brilliance, it is now possibly for users to install Google now on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich powered devices. You’ll now be able to enjoy every last bit of Google Now, including the full functionality of the service which includes the voice search function. It’s been a very long road on making Google Now work on Ice Cream Sandwich, but it’s all finally here. Many of you probably feel like a kid in the candy store right now. If you own an Ice Cream Sandwich powered device and want to see all the amazing features and brilliance of Google Now, there’s only a few short set of instructions to follow to get it to working and running on your device. Again, this requires that you have Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwhich installed. It will not work otherwise and may potentially wreck your device because your messing with system files (messing with system files tends to give me the chills).
If you’re like me, your probably not very skilled in “flashing” or “custom ROMS” or even “renaming APK files.” Therefore, if your like me, you’ll probably sit back and just wait for the manufactures release of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean while everyone under the sun who loves rooting their devices has Google Now already and is rubbing it in your face.
Due to how uneducated I am about ROMs and flashing, I will instead point you to a few XDA threads that will tell you specifically how to install Google Now on your device without causing any trouble. I really wouldn’t want to be the one that was responsible for
breaking your device
helping you get Google Now on your device properly and working! Again, if you haven’t done this before your either going to sit back and wait for the official release or you’re going to want to follow a set of instructions very specifically. With that said, here’s the list of links your going to need to visit in order to get Google Now working and fully functional properly:
There are three different links to XDA threads that you should read and carefully browse if you’re looking to give the powerful Google Now a try. Before you try anything though, you need to keep in mind that the only one responsible for your actions in the process of this will fall upon you. Not the XDA developers nor TheDroidGuy. If you don’t know exactly what you’re trying to do or what your doing when you are doing it, you need to go ask for help in the developers dedicated threads. Either they or experienced members on the XDA Forums will be more than willing to help you out. Everyone is very happy to help and will sometimes even give very detailed and careful instructions through personal messages if needed.
The first place you’re going to need to go to is Lenny Kano’s thread where all the files for Google Now is located. This includes the APK and ZIP files that have first been uploaded. If you want to just skip that (recommended unless you prefer other wise or know what your doing) you can head over to SilentStormer’s thread where you’ll be able to download the fully working Google Now mod and get every last installation instruction you’ll need for devices running AOSP (Android Open Source Project) ROMs. If I am correct and ready everything right, this means your device needs to be rooted.
If those instructions are also way to complex for you, Gachana’s thread was nice enough to summarize the instruction into English for us land dwellers. Either of these threads will allow you to download the mod. Try to remember that this is an unofficial application for Ice Cream Sandwich and therefore you may just experience a few bugs here and there. Most users that have tried it out and downloaded the mod have said that it works superbly with a couple of minor exceptions.
I always felt all this modding and ROM stuff was pretty risky so I always shy away from it. I’d almost prefer to purchase a second device to do all the ROMs and flashing than try to get things working on my main device. If you’re one of those people and don’t want to touch the system files of your device it’s probably best to wait for Jelly Bean and/or look for a alternative on the Google Play store. Either way, Google Now is worth waiting for or if you’re impatient it’s possible to it on your Ice Cream Sandwich device by following the instructions above.
What do you guys think of this? Will you be installing the Google Now mod on your device or will you be sitting back on the sidelines waiting for it on the Jelly Bean release for your device? You already know my stance on all of this, so what’s yours? Let us know in the comments below! We’d love to hear about it!
source: Android Authority

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