Android 4.0 for Users
Simple, beautiful, beyond smart
Android 4.0 builds on the things people love most about Android — easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing.
Android 4.0 was announced over night and will merge the phone and tablet OS bringing the following new or improved features:

Refined, evolved UI
Multitasking
Home screen folders and favorites tray
Resizable widgets
New lock screen actions
Quick responses for incoming calls
Swipe to dismiss notifications, tasks, and browser tabs
Improved text input and spell-checking
Powerful voice input engine
Control over network data
Designed for accessibility
People and profiles
Unified calendar, visual voicemail
Rich and versatile camera capabilities
Redesigned Gallery app with photo editor
Live Effects for transforming video
Sharing with screenshots
Powerful web browsing (bookmarks sync with chrome!)
Improved email
Android Beam for NFC-based sharing
Face Unlock
Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth HDP
New Developer Features
Unified UI framework for phones, tablets, and more
Android 4.0 brings a unified UI framework that lets developers create elegant, innovative apps for phones, tablets, and more. It includes all of the familiar Android 3.x interface elements and APIs — fragments, content loaders, Action Bar, rich notifications, resizable home screen widgets, and more — as well as new elements and APIs.

For developers, the unified UI framework in Android 4.0 means new UI tools, consistent design practices, simplified code and resources, and streamlined development across the range of Android-powered devices.
I think this looks like a good step forward, similar to honeycomb in many ways but still a big improvement over gingerbread.
The improved camera will be a welcome benefit to us all.

The update will begin rolling out sometime in November, but I figure that custom ROMs will also appear before the end of November.

See the full release notes at http://developer.android.com/sdk/and...l#UserFeatures