In the last few days, most of the smartphone attention has firmly fixed upon the manufacturers of Android devices as number of them begin to announce, and roll out updates to Android Ice Cream Sandwich for a select number of their devices. Over the last two days we have seen welcome update announcements from Samsung as well as HTC, informing their users that certain smartphones will begin to see over-the-air updates in the coming weeks, eventually bringing Android 4.0 to a wider audience.
If you are the type of person who listens to the age old 'size does matter' saying, then chances are that you spend most of your life walking around feeling inferior to those around you. General society has this belief that bigger is always better, in every situation, all of the time which in most circumstances I would strongly disagree with. However, if you are to believe the research carried out by Strategy Analytics then it would appear that bigger is indeed better when it comes to mobile devices.
News of an imminent Ice Cream Sandwich release for the Samsung Galaxy S II has been lingering for the past couple of weeks now, but it would appear those in desperate wait to install Android 4.0.x on their S II have had their prayers answered by Google.
There has been some good news for Samsung Galaxy S II owners today with the announcement that the Korean company will start to push out the Android 4.0.3 update to S II devices in Korea and some parts of Europe. The update process looks like it will initially focus on devices in Hungary, Poland and Sweden before starting to roll out in the United Kingdom during the week commencing on March 19th. When taken at face value, it sounds like S II users could be running Ice Cream Sandwich in the very near future, but the reality is that individual networks also need to approve the software updates and put it through vigorous in-house testing to ensure it plays nicely with their own branded software, meaning that although the official update button is pushed it could still be quite some time before users can benefit from it.
The level of interest and passion that is associated with mobile devices, especially those running the iOS and Android operating systems, is something that has skyrocketed over the last couple of years. With the imminent release of the new iPad and Google making some noise about future versions of the Android OS, it seems that consumer interest is only going to increase in the near future.The release of the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android was made public in the final quarter of 2011, but due to the way Google handles allowing manufacturers to update their firmware, it has seen a relatively tiny uptake, with approximately 1% of Android devices in existence running version 4.0.
When anyone mentions a touchscreen device, or to be more specific; a touchscreen tablet device, you instinctively think about Apple and the iPad. Ever since the creation of the ground breaking iPhone in 2007, and the subsequent release of the iPad in 2010, touchscreen devices seem to be synonymous with the company. Apple obviously weren't the first technology company to come up with the idea of controlling a mobile device through a touch based interface, but when they entered that segment of the market, they managed to totally reinvent it and almost assume ownership.
It has hardly been a secret that Apple Inc. have been fighting a patent war on multiple fronts against multiple companies, which most notably include the soon to be Google-owned Motorola Mobility Holdings, as well as the Korean based Samsung Electronics. Motorola and Samsung are arguably two of the largest producers of Android-powered handsets, and with Apple believing both companies are heavily infringing upon company owned patents, they have been relentless in their pursuit of justice through the European legal system.
In a timely announcement on the eve of Apple's big media event, Google has really wrung the changes to its online content-selling infrastructure - know hitherto as the Android Market.
When it comes to mobile operating systems, most of the talk is centered around iOS and Android, with Apple and Google’s OSes generally considered to be the two most advanced offerings out there. That isn't to say that the competition doesn't have something to bring to the table, with the likes of Windows Phone gaining a small amount of traction in the marketplace and definitely looking likely to feature heavily in the future.
With Android 4.0 being publicly available since November 2011, users might be forgiven for wondering why their device can't benefit from the features that Ice Cream Sandwich brings. After all, when Apple releases an update to iOS, users can generally grab the latest version immediately as long as the hardware supports the update. Users of several premium handsets, such as the Samsung Galaxy S II have been waiting for a number of weeks for Samsung to finally announce when they will be allowing users to update to Android 4.0 ICS.
