Tesco Tech Support Blog

Samsung updates Galaxy S2 to ICS

Posted: 28th Mar 2012

A sweet update is on its way.

The Galaxy S2 smartphone from Samsung has been consistently more popular than the iPhone, and with good reason. It’s exceptionally slim, very fast and has a gorgeous AMOLED screen with vibrant colours that’s easy to read in broad daylight.

The only downside to the Galaxy S2 is that it ships running Google’s Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system. That’s now two major updates behind Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), which is available for the very latest smartphones and Android tablets.

In truth, you’re not missing an awful lot by not having Ice Cream Sandwich on the S2, but there are a few reasons that you might be tempted to upgrade. It improves performance, for a start, and has revamped ‘core’ applications like Gmail and Calendar.

If you have been looking forward to ICS on your S2, however, then your wait should be almost over. Samsung has told its Facebook fans that an update to the latest OS should be available for the phone from this week.

The exact timeframe will be down to the mobile operator, but you can check using the ‘Software Update’ feature under ‘About Phone’ in your settings menu, or by using Samsung’s Kies desktop software.

There is one group of S2 owners who are upset, though. If you bought a SIM-free Galaxy S2 without a contract there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to get hold of the update, even if your SIM is from a network operator who’s already released the new firmware.

It’s frustrating because while Android has caught up with – and arguably surpassed – other mobile operating systems, the slow pace of updates to newer versions is a criticism that’s fairly levelled against it. Here’s hoping that as Android phones become increasingly popular, that’s a problem Google is leaning hard on manufacturers to sort out.

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