By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
Owners of Samsung's Galaxy S and original 7-inch Galaxy Tab devices will not be able to upgrade to the latest and unified Android OS 4.0 codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich. The reason for this isn't the hardware but limitations brought about by Samsung's own TouchWiz overlay and country specific carrier apps.
This came to light when Samsung revealed its ICS rollout that included the Galaxy S II, its LTE versions, the Galaxy Note, the Galaxy R and the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus to the Galaxy Tab 10.1. The update is slated to arrive first on both the Galaxy S II and Note in Q1 2012.
According to a blog post, the adding ICS on these Galaxy Tab and the Samsung Galaxy S isn't possible because of lack of space taken up by TouchWiz elements (Touch Wiz / Samsung Widgets / video calls, etc.) as well as third party carrier apps that are country specific such as mobile TV and music apps. There isn't enough RAM and ROM to run both ICS, TouchWiz and the sundry carrier apps.
The Google Nexus S, which has similar hardware, runs ICS just fine but it runs just the ICS software without any extraneous applications.
ICS can still run on these devices but through unlicensed ROMs which require rooting and hacking around the system to eliminate tbe bloatware and overlays. This is not advised, however, since it is not officially supported and device specific issues are unlikely to be fixed.
Samsung sold 10 million of these smartphones under the Epic 4G, Vibrant, Captivate, Fascinate, and Mesmerize monickers with various carriers globally. It is unfortunate that the smartphones have the specs to run ICS (1GHz ARM Hummingbird processors, 512MB RAM) but is limited by add-on software.