Q & A

Can i Upgrade my Android Mobile to Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 OS?

By Amit Bhawani

Posted on October 20, 2011

Question : I have a Samsung Galaxy Mobile and wanted to know if i could update my phone to the latest Ice Cream Sandwich version or not. Is it very easy or should i visit a Service Center to get it upgraded. What the the available options and how could i know if this is compatible with my device or not.

Answer : After the recent Ice Cream Sandwich launch there have been many questions from our readers, whether their mobile phones can be upgraded from either Eclair, froyo or gingerbread to ICS or not and if yes what would be the process. Before we start discussing we need to actually understand that whenever there is a new software available, it does not mean that it could be compatible with your hardware of the device. Hence its important to first ensure about the compatibility of the same by just comparing the minimum specifications of the new software vs the current hardware you have.

As you can see above most of our Galaxy Ace, Galaxy S, Galaxy S2 etc users have been sending us questions on how could they upgrade and the same options apply which were discussed above. Now lets discuss more on what are the actual hardware requirements before we can upgrade to the Android 4.0 version. There have been many speculations that this update is going to ‘run all on devices’ means its designed in such a way that it would work on any device be it a tablet or a mobile phone with any screen size but there are two basic and important requirements.

Ram : The Ram of your device should be of a minimum of 256 Mb which would handle the large applications.
GPU : There should be decent enough GPU on your device to process all the queries in the background.

If your android device does not meet these demand’s then the chances of you upgrading your device are less. We have had recently published a article on Upgrading Galaxy S to Ice Cream Sandwich which was only possible because of the hardware match for the I9000 mobile.

The CyanogenMod team which has been released awesome firmwares for Google Nexus S, Dell Streak, HTC Sensation, HTC Wildfire etc have also informed about the above hardware requirements after testing the CM9 which will be specifically for ICS and would be released within 2 weeks of the code availability. As of now other manufacturers are also getting ready with the customizations availability on their devices in the form of Sense, Motoblur, Touchwiz etc and are going to release the same in around two months once the Nexus Prime is released. This ensures that the Google’s official phone would get first preference followed by other handsets which is why the Motorola Droid Razr also could not get the ICS and was released with gingerbread software.

Especially Samsung as we talk is much concerned about the perfect working so that users don’t complain in the future. Some manufacturers like Asus and Acer release the updates quickly but issues of Wi Fi and force closes comes up and later on they release the patch updates for the same but this process leaves you with time waste.

Samsung with most of their high end phones are nearly about to receive updates while some of them have received it the following are the updates confirmed for the devices –
AT & T Customers : Galaxy S II (SGH-i777), Galaxy S II Skyrocket (SGH-i727), Galaxy Note (SGH-i717), Captivate Glide (SGH-i927) and Galaxy Tab 8.9 (SGH-i957).
Sprint Customers : Nexus S 4G (SPH-d720) ICS Update is Available! and for Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch (SPH-d710).
Verizon : Galaxy Tab 10.1 (SCH-i905) and Galaxy Tab 7.7 (SCH-i815)
T Mobile : Samsung Galaxy S II (SGH-t989), Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G (SGH-t769), Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus (SGH-t869) and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (SGH-t859)

Back to the original question, we will keep you updated if your phone can be upgraded to this latest software release or not, while you can yourself do your homework by cross checking your device’s hardware configuration. The upgrade instructions would be similar to what you have been experiencing for Android 2.1 Éclair, Android 2.2 Froyo, Android 2.3 Gingerbread or Android 3.0 Honeycomb and you wont have to go through any different procedures. Google has not announced any specific instructions regarding the hardware requirements for ICS but the above ones are for better and smooth performance on your device. The availability of the same would be completely dependent on the manufacturers of the respective devices because they need to test the same and then make it available for their users.