Ice Cream Sandwich Not Coming to Samsung Galaxy S or Original Galaxy Tab

It is a sad, sad day for any and all who own the Samsung Galaxy S and/or the Samsung Galaxy Tab because it has just been confirmed that neither device will be receiving Android's Ice Cream Sandwich update. The company recently sent out update schedules on which devices will be receiving Ice Cream Sandwich and when they will receive it and, unfortunately, neither the Samsung Galaxy S nor the Samsung Galaxy Tab (7" original version) made the list.

Fortunately, the later models of Samsung's products will be getting the Ice Cream Sandwich treatment, like the Galaxy S II, Galaxy S II LTE, Galaxy R, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy Tab 8.9, Galaxy Tab 7.7 and Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. However, that means very little to the millions of users who own Samsung's 2010 flagship smartphone or the company's first jump into the tablet market.

An interesting fact is that the Nexus S, which is surprisingly similar to the Galaxy S, is getting the update. That begs the question as to why the Galaxy S is not. Samsung explained that the reason the Galaxy S is not getting the Ice Cream Sandwich update is due to a combination of factors: using the TouchWiz skin, included video conferencing software, additional widgets, carrier software and localization, all of which make it extremely hard for Samsung to deliver an update. Aside from all of that, Samsung also refers to issues with RAM and ROM management.

What is even worse is that this confirms fears about further fragmentation with Android and Ice Cream Sandwich. The new operating system was supposed to fix the issue which is why it is so unsettling to see a powerful device like the Galaxy S get left behind. On the contrary, Apple has delivered its newest iOS 5 software to the iPhone 3GS, which was released in 2009, one year before the Galaxy S.

If you're pretty technically skilled then, you may be able to hack your Galaxy S to run Ice Cream Sandwich, though I am assuming many users are not. This is definitely sad news but I predict that as operating systems get more and more advanced, we will see them popping up on less and less older devices.

Source: Phone Arena - Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab not getting ICS

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