Ice Cream Sandwich coming to Nexus S

It's good news and bad news time, the good news perhaps depending on the mobile phone in your pocket.

If that phone is the Samsung Nexus S, you could be about to get an upgrade to the newly-launched Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. That's according to Google's Gabe Cohen, who has been talking to Engadget about that very thing. He claims the Nexus S will definitely be getting the latest incarnation of Android, saying: 'Currently in the process for releasing Ice Cream Sandwich for Nexus S. Theoretically should work for any 2.3 device.'

That last phrase is interesting and encouraging for anyone with a phone running Gingerbread (2.3). Although the wind has been taken out of its sails a little by HTC, which doesn't seem to share that enthusiasm.





In a statement, it said: 'We are excited about the latest update for Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, and are currently reviewing its features and functionality to determine our upgrade plans. Our goal for Android updates is to give every customer an improved user experience, which means balancing each phone's unique hardware, HTC Sense experience and the Android kernel. While our goal is to upgrade as many of our recent devices as possible, we are committed to maintaining every phone's performance and usability first. Please stay tuned for more updates on specific device upgrade plans.'

In short, the job of adding the upgrade is perhaps not so easy when you throw the HTC Sense UI into the mix. The company also wants to ensure phone's don't suffer a significant drop in performance by adding a few new features. Add in network testing and it could be well into 2012 before most HTC users see Ice Cream Sandwich updates. We hope to be proven wrong though.

As for the Nexus S upgrade, that's unlikely to drop before the new Galaxy Nexus hardware, which is expected in the early part of November. But with Google talking quick and easy, it might well be here before the year is out.