Ice Cream Sandwich Tested on Acer Iconia Tab A200: Better or Worse?

Acer recently pushed out the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update to its Iconia Tab A200 tablet, which we just reviewed. We first tested the A200 when it was running Android 3.2.1, and then again after the update, and came away with mixed results. Although ICS seems to demand more of the A200's Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, it also lasted longer on a charge.

Click through to check out our benchmark results.

For the most part, Android 4.0 has negatively impacted the A200. On the Quadrant benchmark, the A200's score dropped by about 400 points, and is now about 1,000 points below average.

Similarly, we also saw the A200's numbers drop in the An3DBench graphics test, though it was still higher than the category average.

One test where we saw an increase was in the multi-threaded section of the Linpack test, which edged the A200 slightly closer to the average.

Still, where it matters most--battery life--the A200 improved by nearly 45 minutes, and now lasts almost 2 hours longer than the tablet average.

The differences in benchmark results were slight enough  that we doubt most users will notice a difference--in fact, when swiping between menus and pages and opening apps, we didn't detect any change. However, we were pleased to see the boost in battery life, something that will be appreciated by everyone.

Some--but not all--of ICS' features have made it over to the A200. While you can't unlock the tablet using an image of your face (as you can with ICS phones such as the Galaxy Nexus), the Acer Ring on the lock screen has been preserved. Multitasking is also here, and you can still close apps with a swipe to the left, an intuitive and useful feature.

While the camera app provides multiple options to share photos via social networks, it lacks the more robust editing capabilities, which is not such a big deal on the A200, given that it lacks a rear camera.

Overall, consumers should like the improvements that ICS brings to the A200, not just in terms of its endurance, but the additional features, too.