A post on the Android developer’s blog yesterday outlines some steps that developers can take to prepare their Honeycomb tablet apps for Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). The post is authored by Scott Main, lead tech writer for the developer blog.

Main specifically uses the opportunity to remind developers that ICS is designed to run on all form factors, including small mobile phone screens and larger tablet displays. Apps that were originally designed to run on Honeycomb are forward-compatible with ICS but the developer will need to tweak the coding first. It’s recommended to either prevent installation of existing apps on ICS or enable smaller screen support.

The post goes on to offer a few other tips such as how to make the Action Bar work on handsets and a trick that devs can use for early app testing, as the ICS SDK hasn’t been released yet.

Unfortunately there is no time tablet on a SDK or public release, with Main only noting that more information about the upcoming OS will be provided as it nears release. Our best guess is that users can expect the new Android OS sometime in October as reported last month.

Ice Cream Sandwich was announced at Google’s I/O developer conference in May and is described as a combination of Gingerbread and Honeycomb. The OS will work across all Google devices, bridging the gap between tablets and smartphones.

Samsung is expected to manufacture the first Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone, codenamed Nexus Prime. Early reports indicate a Super AMOLED HD display running at 720p with an OMAP 4460 processor inside. Other rumored specifications include a 4G LTE radio, 1GB of RAM, 1080p HD video capture and playback, a 1-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 5-megapixel rear camera "delivering class-leading image quality in addition to superior low-light performance."