Late last year, Samsung said that it would be rolling out Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to its Galaxy devices in the “first quarter” of 2012, starting with the Galaxy S II and Galaxy Note. A version of the official ICS ROM was leaked for the SGSII earlier this month, and now a more recent build appears to have hit forums.
PocketNow says it’s an official version of the ROM, and while it’s still a test release, it’s more or less what all Galaxy devices will eventually end up with. They also found that the Contacts app wasn’t working on this build, but otherwise said the ROM is snappy and improved battery life.
If you want to give this a go, you have to register on SamMobile’s forums and be willing to mess with your phone’s firmware, entirely at your own risk. Or, you know, you could just wait for Samsung and/or your carrier to make it available on your phone. It should be right around the corner, if Samsung keeps its promise and the carriers don’t take forever to approve it. [SamMobile via Pocket Now]
BlipittyBlopitty
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 2:20 PMOfficial buggy Beta released
Jack
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 2:30 PM“…and the carriers don’t take forever to approve it.”
We all know how long that takes.
Sam
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 3:07 PMGenuine question – doesn’t Samsung bundle Swype into their Android releases? Those screenshots look a lot like the stock ICS keyboard to me.
Stew
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 3:15 PMYep Swype came on my Telstra SGSII
JT....
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 3:16 PMYeah they load the above samsung keyboad and swype.
Sam Broomby
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 9:58 PMThe thing is, this is stock ICS, whereas the ICS Samsung have designed is based on the touchwiz present in Gingerbread ROMs for the GSII. Thanks. Google spent all this time and money making android look beautiful, and you have to go and ruin it T_T
Ross
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 4:02 PMi give it another 6months after it has been released that optus has it ready for its customers.
Dan Miller
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 4:06 PM6 months? That’s optimistic. I would say this time next year. I mean really, what do the telcos do that make it take so long? Are they adding custom apps and their own evil locking software?
Ritik
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 7:55 PMUs telstra customers may not even see the update. We are still stuck on buggy 2.3.3 while other have provided regular updates, until 2.3.6. basically telstra has failed to release a single update for the s2
Andy
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 10:17 PMyou could just flash it yourself you do realise. Xda developers have stuff out pretty quickly
Antonia
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 10:33 PMYep I agree. If Telstra don’t release within a month of Samsung releasing then I’ll simply root my phone and load it myself.
Zengster
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 8:53 PMI doubt it’s the official one it looks just like vanilla ICS!
SHoTTa35
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 1:15 AMLOL – LPH build came out a few days ago and actually doesn’t look like the pics. It’s touchwized all over it. And it’s not “Official” either, still beta/alpha or whatever.
Liam Johnson
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 1:09 PMJust because it’s not the final release, doesn’t mean it’s not official. The kernel is signed with Samsung’s signature, and i.e. doesn’t reset the binary flash counter on the device (which increments each time an unsigned binary is flashed). It’s an official ROM, it’s just not a finished one.