Samsung says TouchWiz keeps Galaxy S from Ice Cream Sandwich

By Jeff Hughes Published December 23, 2011

Bad news—if you’re one of the 10 million or so people that owns a Samsung Galaxy S phone, you won’t be partaking in the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update that the other Galaxy smartphones will be getting next year.

Samsung recently announced that a number of the Galaxy line will be joining the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S in running Android 4.0 early 2012, but on the company blog they confirmed that the Galaxy S as well as the 7 inch Galaxy Tab will not be getting the upgrade.

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The reason for the upset? Samsung points out that the culpability lies with TouchWiz, Samsung Widgets, Video Calls and other functions which rob both the Galaxy Tab and the the Galaxy S of the necessary RAM or ROM to run the new OS without taking a hit in usability. There’s just no room for the Ice Cream Sandwich update.

The Verge points out that this comes as a major disappointment as the Galaxy S runs the same 1GHz Hummingbird processor and memory as the Nexus S, which is currently able to accommodate ICS, but of course the Samsung Nexus S doesn’t run TouchWiz.

Those of you that don’t want to shell out for a completely new phone for ICS, TechCrunch points to a fully functioning Ice Cream Sandwich ROM for the Galaxy S; TouchWiz gets the boot, though its supposedly not the smoothest. Keep in mind that if you go this route you’ll invalidate your warranty or you could possibly screw up your smartphone.

Some of the phones that are getting the ICS update include the Galaxy S II, Galaxy S II LTE, Galaxy Note, and the Galaxy R. Owners will most likely get the update in the early months of 2012.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

I'm a SF Bay Area-based writer/ninja that loves anything geek, tech, comic, social media or gaming-related.

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