Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 is ICS upgradable

After the announcement of the ICS-running HTC Desire C (powered by a single-core 600MHz CPU), every time the dual-core Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 came up there was someone to ask “why is the more powerful phone running Gingerbread and not Ice Cream Sandwich?”.

A leaked promo video for the Ace 2 suggests there might be some hope though. The video labels the phone “ICS upgradeable”, but neglects to mention when that might happen.

Here's the promo video in question, the money shot is at 0:14.

It’s interesting that Galaxy Ace 2 is powered by a NovaThor chipset, just like the I8530 Galaxy Beam and the Galaxy S Advance (which wasn’t on the official list of phones slated to get ICS). It’s just speculation at this point, but the chances of a 4.0 update for those two phones just went up a bit.

You might want to wait for an official confirmation, but if getting stuck with Gingerbread was your only reason for not getting a Galaxy Ace 2, you may want to go back for a second look.

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ICS-running Xperia S leaks

The Sony Xperia S is scheduled to receive ICS at the end of the month but thanks to SonyXP we get to see the Sony flagship running the latest Android version early.

Sony has preserved their custom launcher on Android 4.0.4 and has even added a couple of new tricks to it. There's a new Walkman music player and a new Gallery, which looks great and supports gestures for increasing and reducing thumbnail size (much like Control and the mouse wheel do on Windows).

The original video was taken down, which gives it more credibility. Here's a copy of it, though.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Motorola releases demo videos for Android 4.0 update

Motorola has released a bunch of videos on its Japanese site detailing the upcoming Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update for its phones.

The videos are meant to highlight the changes between the current Gingerbread ROM and the new ICS ROM. We must say we are very impressed with what Motorola has to show here. While most of the other OEMs are busy slapping heavy layers of custom skin on top of stock Android, Motorola's is practically stock.

Some of the additions Motorola has made include a new lockscreen. While stock ICS only offers you two option, Unlock and Camera, the Motorola ROM also adds the option to launch the dialler and the messaging app. Other changes include Motorola's standard set of icons that are unchanged from the current Gingerbread build. The Camera app resembles the current Gingerbread camera app but includes the options added in ICS such as timelapse mode.

Motorola has also included its Webtop mode, which will available on select phones. Once you connect the phone to a TV or a display in Webtop mode, the screen UI resembles that of ICS' tablet mode and you can use your phone's display as a trackpad to control an on-screen pointer.

Then there are also the usual ICS features such as homescreen folder support, Face Unlock, screenshot capture facility, resizable widgets, etc.

You can catch some of the new features in the videos below but for the full set of videos click on the source link below.

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