By Just yesterday Samsung gave us a glimmer of hope that their 2010 flagship devices – the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab – could get Ice Cream Sandwich as they went back to reevaluate the feasibility of the task. With TouchWiz in the way, it certainly won’t seem as easy as we’d hope considering these devices have limited storage compared to their 2011 followups.
New rumors say that Samsung might not be able to bring Ice Cream Sandwich but still wants to bring some of its features over to the device in the form of a “value pack.”
The value pack would add features to their Gingerbread ROMs that mirror some of Ice Cream Sandwich’s. While this obviously isn’t that great of a solution compared to getting the real deal you’d at least be getting some new features not previously available to users of their Gingerbread phones.
Of course, things are a bit different for the 7 inch tab. The main idea is to get Ice Cream Sandwich onto it so that those users can take advantage of the tablet-specific apps available.
With just a value pack, it kind of defeats the purpose, no? We hope this rumor is true if Samsung really can’t get Ice Cream Sandwich onto these devices, but we do hope they’re doing everything they can to make ICS a possibility. [SammyHub via GSMArena]
“Value Pack” = corporate talk for “We’re not going to give you what you really want, but we’re going to polish a turd and try to pass it off to you, our valued customer, to maximize the user experience!”
Just as “New and Improved”, actually means they found a cheaper way to make it, and the product in question sucks worse than ever.
I hate to sound like a dick… but if you want the latest and greatest… get a Nexus. That’s what they are there for. p.s. I totally agree with you :)
Samsung Nexii? I’m not trying to sound like a dick, but absolutely not. I’m certainly not saying they’re junk, but there are features that they do not have that I require – a removable/expandable SD card, for starters (yes, I do need a LOT more than 32GB – I have three 32GB cards that I switch out fairly regularly on my daily driver, yes, three – and I know I’m very much in the minority :P ).
Being made by someone other than Samsung would’ve been great. I wouldn’t buy a Samsung Android for myself. I’ve owned a GS (only because the person who owned it before I did swore that it was bricked because they had no idea what they were doing, which was remedied 20 minutes after they left) -, and, for a short time ( a loaner from a friend to play around with ) – a GSII. Nice screens (very over-rated by some people, but definitely nice), but I hated the radios in both and have heard the same from a lot of people both personally and online – including the Samsung GN.
The latest? Absolutely. The Greatest? Very highly debatable. Certainly not for me, they aren’t. If you have one, and enjoy it, then more power to you. I would never knock anyone for enjoying something that they own, they’re just not for me, although that is one of the things that makes Android great – if you don’t like the features on a particular phone, there is most likely another that does, as for what OS or ROM it’s running, that’s fine too – I just make sure that I buy phones that are easy to work with, and specced well, and I’ll get what I want on my phone and out of it :)
Wow! that is a lot of SD card activity. If I may ask, what requires you to use so many SD Cards on your cellphone?
LOL, fair question. One is my “daily driver SD” – the one that has my most commonly used apps, most recent ROM(s)/build(s)/tweaks, most recent ClockworkMod and Titanium Backups, several hundred photos and videos, and other various media.
The second SD is mostly for very large apps – for example, when NFS:Shift was first released, I think it was $10, then it was on sale for 99¢, so I bought it, only to find out after getting a replacement phone about 1.5 years back, and not long after NFS:Shift was released, that NFS:Shift either didn’t show up as purchased and I had to pay the full price, then a bit later, that version showed up as “unavailable in this country”. A few months after that, it somehow showed up as purchased on the market, so I downloaded it again and ran a Titanium Backup so I wouldn’t lose it, and copied the TB to SD #2. A lot of the games and apps that show up on Amazon’s FAOTD are quite big, and 100-500MB apps add-up quickly, so if there is an app I want, but don’t necessarily want to play/use it right away, I’ll download it or send it there until I want to play with it (I did that with almost all of the apps I bought when Google had their ten-cent sales. I also store a lot of video on #2. Videos, especially high-quality videos, can take up space quickly – easier to swap out cards then to keep sending videos from SD-computer-SD – I just run the same ROM and kernel on SD 1 & 2 so there aren’t compatibility issues when I switch cards.
The third SD is the “Guinea Pig Files” – it’s usually in my other TBolt (also a guinea pig phone). #3 is for storage for mods that are anything from publicly-available ROMs and kernels, to a lot of custom ROMs and kernels that are just plain works in progress or fully-functioning, but I keep them on the 3rd card (and mostly, the other phone). #3 also has a ton of CMR backups to compare ROMs/builds/kernels and go back and forth for comparison until I get one I like or get one the way I want it, then I send it to #1 if it’s daily driver material (it’s nice to not have to worry about making an error and having to take awhile restoring the phone you use as, well, a phone. lol, not good if someone is trying to get in contact with you.
The reason I have 2 TBolts is that I bought one on launch day, then a few months later, a friend sold me his very cheap because he wanted the Bionic. I was already into themeing and trying to scratch together custom ROMs with a few friends who luckily have the same phone (and know a hell of a lot more about writing custom ROMs from scratch than I do). I already had an extra 32GB SD card, and with the 2 TBolts (which come with 32GB SD cards), I ended up with three, and got used to using them that way.
I do also keep backups of everything on a computer as well, but since I have them, I prefer to keep large apps, and apps that look like they may disappear from the market on a separate SD card. I could get away with using two if I had to, but since I have three, and I’m used to having and using three, I use them :)
Yeah, that’s great. Where can I get the Nexus version of my Galaxy Tab? Oohhh, right. There isn’t one. So until there is one, I’m stuck with crappy touchwiz. Samsung, please don’t force me to root this tab and install a 3rd party version of ICS. I’d love to be vendor-supported on this one. But I will if I have to.
Screw the value pack. We want ICS touchwizz or not.
This is BullSh*t. Nexus S can handle ICS why ours can’t ??? F*ck U Samsung.
It can, they just might not want to spend the money developing it.
Surely since Google did most of the work already getting ICS onto the Nexus, it would be less work than re-writing some of the features to work in Android 2.3…
Because the Nexus S doesn’t have TouchWiz bloatware.
they most likely can’t due to licences and contracts to the carrier
It takes too much effort to ugrade old phones.
Want ICS? get a new phone, galaxy s old tech by now.
If they pushed stock ICS, it would fit on those devices just fine. The addition of TouchWiz is what is hurting the possibility of an update.
The Fascinate…with it’s incredibly limited RAM, is running ICS right now and you can install *plenty* of apps.
Size limitation is somewhat of a lie. jt1134 had to increase the size of the /system partition to get it working, at the expense of another partition of course… but it works.
Considering the number of apps I have installed on that device, I simply cannot see how size would be realistic constraint. Take whatever space is needed for TouchWiz from the /data partition. Problem solved.
Yeah, VZW screwed that phone…but it’s still a nice device for what it is.
“fit on those devices just fine” is total bullcrap. I work on the ICSSGS port to GSM SGS and it’s definitely not easy to cram ICS on these phones.
Right, Samsung knows better than Google.
Of course they do! Android wasn’t getting sued enough on its own so Samsung had to re-design the UI to look like the iPhone as much as possible!
If they really wanted to push some goodwill out then dont develop touchwiz, let the “official” builds stay in the 2.x realm and then release source for kernels and previous versions along with an unlocking tool to make it really easy for owners and devs to take control and put up to date software on them.
Its out of warranty at this point anyway, why not just let the person have control of their phone?
it’s called a Nexus, and it’s also make by Samsung. Here’s a link where you can read all about it…. http://www.google.com/nexus
You do know short of spending $700 that phone is only out on Verizon right? Not everyone uses Verizon. Not really a solution to the problem is it?
Really clever. Well, not clever at all because it would require you actually reading my post.
Not everyone hates TouchWiz…
I don’t know a single person that likes it.
Hello. I like it.
Now you do. :-D
And those people could not update and keep their older skinned android. Its your choice. Right now you dont get that choice, Samsung would rather keep you stuck on an older version because they dont want to rewrite their bloatware for a phone they wont make any more money off of.
Not everyone cares about updates, either. (if they are everything to you…get a Nexus)
Why don’t they just take touchwiz out
Because some folks buy Samsung phones *because* they have TouchWiz. If they had sold the SGSII on VZW, or if they had offered a G’Nex with TW, I would have gone that route in a heart-beat.
You are in the minority. The touchwiz UI is so much worse than stock Android, especially over stock ICS.
What minority? Modders? ROM users? Sure…as are you.
Thankfully I am also a part of a much larger group of folks who believe Touchwiz is just peachy. Ya know, that 99% that *doesn’t* mod their phones? Yeah, those guys….they don’t really seem to have a problem with it. :)
You are more than entitled to your opinion. …and you are more than welcome to the opinion that *my* opinion sucks. That’s the beauty of Android. We can all like different stuff and all still get along because…we all like Android. :)
tw 3.0 sucks!
tw 4.0 rocks!!
Agreed whole-heartedly.
If the SGS3 comes out by May or so, I will definitely be checking it out and may end up using the G’Nex purely as a dev unit.
Can’t wait to see what they do with 5.0.
my tab is a year old.
by the time they roll the update out the service life will be almost over for me and i’ll just use it wifi only.
let’s see what my next one will be.
What about the T-Mobile galaxy s which is still in froyo
Seriously? Man, that’s rough.
This is the same thing asus did with the garminfone they gave 2.1 with some 2.2 mixed in
Just buy a galaxy nexus and shut up.
With the crap samsung has been pulling with there phones and tablets i just cant find a way to care anymore if apple sues the hell out of them and puts them under or not and this is just one more reason to dislike samsung.
#neveragain
Hey Samsung, the solution is to offer the user either ICS with no touchwiz *or* the craptacular “value pack”. Heck it’s not like you have to support them, you don’t support the users now!
…..or you could just do a lot of it now by installing Go EX plus the ICS theme, plus the ICS Keyboard. Pretty Lame, Samsung.
Didn’t samsung comfirm this news on a foreign tech site a little while back? I remember reading about this a while ago.
Glad there are custom roms trying to find time to build from source for my cappy I remove touchwiz I like go launcher fast and easy. I know cappy can run ICS. Just depends on the features important to the user me I don’t need touchwiz. I mainly root my phone to run I9000 roms as i like the faster HSPDA and HSUDA for speed. But each user has reasons or not it boils down to the phones user.
I got a Galaxy S (vibrant) I ain’t got no stinking gingerbread, so what’s this BS about a value pack!?
Wow there are a lot of commments= a lot of Galaxy S owners. The Galaxy S Epic 4g phone on sprint was by far the best phone I have ever had. It was frustrating how long it took to get Froyo and then Gingerbread on it. However it made me look at XDA and ended up putting a custom ROM on it that nearly doubled the speed of the device and drastically improved battery life. I am happy to see Samsung is trying to give us something here-though I think they would really win over the hearts by giving us the option to install ICS without TW, or the value pack onto GB. Giving the consumer options is what we want. If they want people to continuely buy new samsung devices, you have to continue to support your high end devices more than 12 months after it is released. People will catch on otherwise and will hold grudges. You limit people, they will find a way, and go elsewhere AHEM APPLE AHEM…
Eh, as long as my Fascinate runs without glitching all over the place. Although the ICS camera app would be nice.. ;)
Now, I’m only saying this assuming Verizon gets the Galaxy S3. They did not get the Galaxy S2.
Tell you what Samsung – you keep your Value Pack and give me a $200 off coupon for the Galaxy Nexus. Deal??
Would be awesome if they could just give people an easy option to get touchwiz off of their phones. But hopefully this type of problem is an issue of the past. Hopefully there is a little more communication between manufacturers and google so these clowns are not shitting out devices that won’t even have the space to except the next upgrade. Obviously some cheapo phones might have issues. But the galaxy line was hot stuff.
But, then why do not they update SGS Plus i9001 to ICS? That phone has same specs as “SE Xperia Arc S” which is getting ICS treatment.
They cannot say that i9001 cannot run ICS because of “hardware limitations”. And that phone is still on sale in many telekom operators shops.
Even LG announced ICS for Optimus Black which is weaker than i9001. I want to know why Samsung refuse to update i9001???
Galaxy S1 is already 18 months old phone.
It was released at 2010. 6.
There is no other company upgrade their year 2010 device for android 4.0(ICS) update.
Samsung is only company who support year 2010 device upgrade.
HTC, Sony Ericsson, Moto and All other Android manufactures are same.
There is no upgarde for year 2010 models.
1. Official HTC facebook
facebook . com/notes/htc-uk/ice-cream-sandwich-android-40-updates-for-htc-handsets/300698153293006
; No ICS(android 4.0) upgrade for year 2010 model.
2. Official Sony Ericsson Blog
blogs.sonyericsson . com/products/2011/12/21/ice-cream-sandwich-coming-to-2011-xperia%E2%84%A2-smartphones-from-end-marchearly-april-2012/
; No ICS upgrade for year 2010 model.
3. Official announcement from motorola
motorola . com/blog/2011/12/07/motorola-update-on-ice-cream-sandwich/
; No ICS upgrade for year 2010 model.
There is no other android OEM upgrade ICS for year 2010(and older) models.
Samsung is only comapny who support ICS upgrade for 18 months old phone.
In addition, They already serviced 2 times OS upgrade for Galaxy S1.
I don’t care when my device released. If it can run ICS then it should! That is why Apple beating Samsung. Apple cares about customers.
Secondly touchwiz is totally useless bloatware. Users will be only grateful if Samsung will remove it from ALL their devices.
Samsung is building stunning devices and killing them with terrible software.
Whatever happens whether ics comes or value pack this will be the first phone ever to get the highest number of major firmware upgrades(not mere updates) heck even the nexus one didn’t have this much support.
At least Samsung are trying. You see any other oems supporting a their 18month old phone? Well then stfu moaners. If you care that much go with A Nexus. The only reason I didn’t jump on the nexus was that the next Galaxy S line always pwnd the hardware of the nexus like 3-5months later…
Theres an update about this case. It seems that Samsung will bring ICS to Galaxy S but without some “features” from stock version…
Tell Sammy to get off the Pot! HTC will own you in 2012 if you continue to ignore your customers demands. Kindly update my shit to ICS or we will send McDonalds to Korea so that everyone will look like the new (fatass) supreme leader.