Handsets

Huawei Honor First to Get Ice Cream Sandwich Update

33

I bet you didn’t see this coming. The Huawei Honor is the first Android smartphone to receive an update to Ice Cream Sandwich. Available now on the handset manufacturer’s website is a “demo-build” of Android 4.0 for all Honor owners to download. It’s a much quicker turnaround process than expected, and beats other manufacturers to market. Not even the Nexus S has received its official update to ICS (not to mention the lack of availability of the Galaxy Nexus in the US). The update is available in Huawei’s native Chinese but also supports all standard languages built in to Android. It can be found at the source link below.

[Huawei via XDA]

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33 Comments

  1. Kudos, all major manufacturers should be ashamed of themselves

    1. Specially Samsung and Google because the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus S should have been the first devices to get ICS…

      1. Well, the Galaxy Nexus is supposed to launch with 4.0, so technically it already has ICS. It’s just that nobody has the Galaxy Nexus…

        EDIT: Ah, I guess I’m behind the times. As far as I know, nobody in Canada has it, at least.

        1. Nobody? Quite a few people have the Galaxy Nexus in the US. It’s not all that expensive to import it, and you don’t have to wait on the carrier.

        2. Common as muck,here in the UK!

        3. I have it in Canada. Straight from Bell!

          1.  I have it in Canada as well, but with Bell only selling it as a new activation device on 3 year contracts, it’s not getting the love it deserves. I had to con a salesman to get mine put on a 30 day plan to get it out of Bells grip.

            I swear to god they don’t want to sell this phone. I know 9 other guys that all want this phone bad, but either have plans they don’t want to cancel or are on other carriers; and of all the guys I know I’m the only one that’s been able to get on so far.

            I was in FS on the 8th and then the 9th and they have 30-35 units sitting in the display case and the girls behind the counter are like “we have lots of requests but bell won’t let us sell them”.

            So it’s been available in Canada since the 8th, and there are a bunch of them available. They are just hard to get your hands on. I swear Bell hates that they are unlocked.

            Virgin has them as well on 3 year contract or that SuperTAB (think that’s what it’s called) which apparently is just like buying the phone, but sounded a lot more complicated to have to deal with.

            O.

        4. It is all over Canada with Bell & Virgin 

    2. not really.   the major manufacturers probably have 10x the number of phones to make firmwares for… and each firmware has 100 variants…    wouldnt be suprised if Huawei pulled out all the stops for this update to grab some extra publicity.

      1. Yeah right. Manufacturers for the most part are only upgrading their 1-3 most recent recent and high-end devices.

  2. great job leave it STOCK VANILLA!!!!

  3. Hauwei IS suck and horrible!!! Hardware is so piece of sh**!!! ICS is cool… HTC, Samsung are popular and the best!!… time for Hauwei in R.I.P!! Sorry Hauwei, you suck period!! ….. T mobile G2

  4. What comes first? First official ICS update or Galaxy Nexus VZW release?

  5. F-ing hi-LAR-ious!

  6. LOL so a crappy phone manufacturer can get ICS out but Google can’t get it to the Nexus S?
    slowly but surely the nexus line is becoming irrelevant

    1. I resent that, the Honor is Huawei’s first good phone.

  7. Huawei actually makes good phones overseas it’s just for some reason their good phones never make it to the US, kind of like you see some high end phones that have always been normal in Asia weren’t heard of in other countries. But we do end up with the crappy ones!

  8. Wow seriously? Not even Samsung nor Motorola not to mention HTC couldn’t get ICS but Huwei can? Wtf! Manufacturers and carriers get your crap together!

    1. Huawei is the second-largest supplier of mobile telecommunications equipment infrastructure equipment in the world – only after Ericsson. They’re looking into launching high-end devices in North America and Europe starting in 2012. They already sell high-end devices in the asian markets, but like Nokia, if you live in North America, you wouldn’t think that they ever made high-end equipment.

  9. What a wonderfully big “fuck you” to us Nexus owners.

    THIS is why products inferior to Android phones still gain prominence. 

  10. Enthusiasts are very hard at work porting ICS to existing handsets. I’ll have it on my Thunderbolt before VZW has a new phone for sale that has it already installed. I’m on Vicious MIUI hybrid port now, and expect a fully native version before too long. Sammy’s time has come and gone-they should have picked another carrier in the US. VZW sucks balls yet again.

  11. samsung suck, i cannot update my I9100 firmware using Kies. Kies suck!!. hay samsung, give me kies for linux version, not crappy Kies for window or mac version. SAMSUNG SUPPORT FOR LINUX COMMUNITY, IS SO SUCK!!!.

    1. One; you obviously can’t speak English and two; WINE exists.

  12. So what you’re saying is that the Google Nexus was supposed to be the first phone out with ICS, but instead that Honor goes to Huawei?  =)

  13. Its virtual buttons looks useless, since the phone already carries its own capacitive buttons. I think it would be great to modify ICS and remove the virtual buttons. Doing so will optimize the screen for wider viewing.

    1. What virtual buttons? Unless the picture was changed, there are no virtual buttons, just the four physical buttons, and the launcher icons above it.

      1. Those button on the home screen. Galaxy Nexus doesn’t have any physical buttons because it is integrated inside its UI on ICS.

        1. Ah, gotcha. Sorry, I misunderstood you. Ya, The GN has no physical buttons as you said. Perhaps Huawei already had the hardware worked out before deciding to release it with ICS? I think it would be nice to see options on the ICS phones – virtual buttons, or hardware buttons? After playing with a buddy’s GNex for a few hours, I think I prefer hardware buttons. I didn’t hate the virtual buttons, I just prefer the hardware buttons, perhaps because I am so used to them. I’ve read in multiple sources that Huawei is planning on releasing high-end phones in North America in 2012 and moving forward. As I mentioned in an above post, most people don’t realize it, but they are actually the second-largest supplier of mobile telecommunications equipment infrastructure equipment in the world (second only to Ericsson) , so I look forward to seeing what their future offerings are. The more “good manufacturers” getting on board with Android, the better! Huawei does make high-end stuff, it just isn’t sold outside of the Asian markets at the moment, for the most part.

          1. The phone is currently on “demo-build” and Huawei might do some minor changes before they release it to the public. We’ll just have to wait and see.

        2. I think that the virtual buttons are either a GN exclusive thing or turned off by default in ICS. I’m running it on my Evo right now and as far as I know there wasn’t any point in the development process where the virtual buttons had to be turned off. Also this is far from hard evidence but a lot of the mockups for next year’s phone’s that we’ve seen so far have had hardware buttons.

  14. Did anyone read the article it said demo build. Hell it could still be in Alpha for all we know. The reason the other OEM is waiting is because they don’t want to release a demo build but a full one that they know will not have many or no issue.

  15. props to Huawei. well played

  16. Yes too bad the handset makers and carriers don’t prepare for software upgrades, Huewei have always been fast and cheap on the software latest, why is it so hard for the others to be fast and cheap.

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