Google in the Galaxy Nexus, set to go on sale this month in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The new OS achieves much of what device makers have been trying to achieve by augmenting earlier Android releases on their own, which has created differences among versions on the market, according to some speakers on a panel at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco. Device makers and carriers have customized Android for their own purposes since it was introduced in 2007.

The new OS takes Android "dramatically forward," said Kevin Packingham, senior vice president of product innovation at Samsung. Among other things, it requires no physical buttons and includes a feature for swiping applications off the screen.

"There has been some fragmentation with Android, since it's been on such a quick development pace ... now that, I think, a lot of those baseline capabilities are available, that that fragmentation will continue to diminish over time," Packingham said.

Samsung and Google co-developed the Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich side-by-side in the same building. But another Android handset maker also praised the new OS.

"They totally renovated their user experience," said Jinsung Choi, a senior vice president at LG. "Probably that will make our life a lot easier ... we don't need to make any modifications."