Man, when the Galaxy Nexus was first debuted with Ice Cream Sandwich it looked amazing (still does). However you’re an owner of a Samsung Galaxy S or an original Galaxy Tab and your contract isn’t up for a while. Maybe it is, but you’re thinking to yourself that you love the Galaxy S hardware or you love that little tablet and that maybe if you hope really hard Samsung will grace your device with Ice Cream Sandwich. Well even with hope sometimes we don’t get what we want, as you well know, Samsung made it clear that the Galaxy S and the Galaxy Tab wouldn’t be seeing the awesome, new Android 4.0 OS. Well, that was until they back pedaled and rumors were flying about that these devices would see it or that they may receive a “value pack” that would give the best features of ICS without the need for a full update instead.
Samsung believes that the hardware just doesn’t have the stones to run ICS efficiently even with Google saying that ICS should run on most Gingerbread devices. Folks cried foul considering that the Nexus S and the Galaxy S run very similar hardware and as we told you in a previous article, Samsung wouldn’t be bringing 4.0 to the Galaxy S because of the TouchWiz skin. Apparently there isn’t Ram or Rom to run both that and the ICS OS. So again, rumors started flying that Samsung was bring the value pack. Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Samsung backpedaled yet again and stated that they would not be bringing ICS to either device. A spokesperson for Samsung stated that the company won’t offer the update due to the older Galaxy devices’ hardware specifications and that they are limited and optimized for Android 2.3.
So with that said, as of right now it appears that the owners of the Galaxy S or Galaxy Tab will not see ICS cream sandwich unless they root the device and flash a ROM on it. Personally I would hold out until CM9 comes out which from their projected timeline back in November should be relatively soon. Maybe Samsung will backtrack their view on ICS for the S and Tab but I wouldn’t hold my breath, sorry.
[via TNW]