Installed NexusBeam 4.1.0 last night on my Nexus S. ICS is pretty fantastic so far.

Awesome#

  • Tiny interface tweaks like smooth fades
  • Attractive spell check under-lining in most text input fields
  • Screen orientation rotation effect (Thanks to iOS for forcing Android people to up their UI game)
  • People app!
  • “My Contact Card” concept in People app. I can’t believe this took so long
  • Settings App sucks a lot less

Less Awesome#

  • Google Search bar at the top of the home screen. (I don’t really use this, but maybe I’ll have to start now)
  • Horizontal scrolling through the apps drawer
  • Once finished scrolling through the apps drawer you start scrolling through your widgets.
  • Less battery life (but I’m using a brand new, probably untweaked, community build, so I’m not going to actually register this as a complaint yet)

It is hard to have any real opinion until I get a stock Google Rom and try it out, but for now I am very happy with ICS.

My Steps to Install#

  1. Download NexusBeam 4.1.0
  2. Drop on SD card via USB
  3. Reboot in to ClockWorkMod recovery
  4. Backup my Cyanogen 7.0.whatever ROM
  5. Flash NexusBeam 4.1.0 *

* - I did not do a full system wipe (wipe cache/data partitions) before installing NexusBeam. After booting my phone, I got a dialog box that popped up saying “Upgrading Apps 0 of 57” that “Upgraded” my apps or something. When this process was complete I had ICS installed with all of the system data I had previously without the need to restore data from backups with Titanium Backup.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1380608