It’s just a taste of what we’re to expect from ICS on cheap android tablet

Well, the wait is over. On Tuesday, Nvidia released a video of Asus’ new Transformer Prime Android tablets running the new, tasty, Androidy treat. What’s more, the tablet is powered by Nvidia’s recently unveiled Tegra 3 quad-core CPU, the most powerful mobile processor announced to date. Though the footage is meager, the Prime seems to run ICS effortlessly.

At first glance, it looks as if the Transformer Prime is still running the same old Android 3.0 tablet, with which we’re all familiar. The home screen still displays recently opened pages in small window panes, while lining the bottom of the screen with user-selected apps.It seems today, however, that early Android tablet adopters are the lucky ones.

As one of the first tablets to run Android, we can only assume that Motorola has a deal worked out with Google, in which the Xoom receives new versions of the operating system before most other devices from competing manufacturers. When Google announced version 3.1 of Honeycomb at its I/O developer conference last May, Xoom owners were also the first to receive the update before the roll-out spread to other Android tablet.

But soon after we’re introduced to the tablet, the demo shows off the subtle differences between the two software versions. ICS brings a new “transition effect” to swiping between app menu screens, seamlessly elevating one layer over the other when the user moves her finger back and forth. The example in the video shows the movement between the apps menu and the widgets menu, another new feature found in ICS. It appears that it was just released for NOOK, but Wired is blocking it's access from Android Tablets, only allowing access on NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color.

The demo finally shows off some of the Prime’s raw power, with two tests of the Tegra 3′s performance. First, a 1080p video looks to run smoothly, while a jaunt through a graphics-intensive app utilizes “all four cores built into the Tegra 3,” enhancing the in-game looks.

It’s just a taste of what we’re to expect from ICS on cheap android tablet. Unfortunately we don’t have a solid release on the Prime, and we aren’t sure if another tablet running ICS will appear before the new Transformer. With any luck, the debut of ICS on tablets will bring to light other easter eggs we’ve yet to see. Savvy Captivate owners with rooted phones have been running ICS for a couple of months now and it is running better than previous distros of Android.