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Samsung Galaxy S Fascinate, Captivate, Vibrant and Epic 4G will not be getting an update to the latest version of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). The original Samsung Galaxy Tab 7" model won't be updated either.
Update 12/27/2011: There are new reports that suggest that Samsung is reconsidering its decision.
A blog post from Samsung reported that Samsung Galaxy S smartphones don't have enough RAM or ROM to run Android 4.0 along with the Samsung TouchWiz UI.
Meanwhile, tech fans don't like the reason given for not updating the Samsung Galaxy S line, especially since the Samsung Nexus S, which has the same 1GHz processor and RAM as the Galaxy S line, was getting an update to ICS until it was halted.
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich combines the Android smartphone OS with the tablet OS (Honeycomb from Google) and adds new features. See all features in 4.0 Primer.
Samsung has been very slow to update its smartphone models after release. Last year, the update to Android 2.2 Froyo was called "Froyogate" because it took so long to be released. There were announcements in November 2010 and constant "coming soon" notices until finally updates were released in early 2011. After Samsung released the core code for the software update, the carriers then added their own software, which had to be tested with the update.
The Samsung Fascinate and Samsung Epic 4G, were updated to Android 2.3 Gingerbread, while Captivate and Vibrant owners are still waiting for their update.
The latest models of Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets will be upgraded to Android 4.0 in 2012. The ICS-upgradable devices are the Samsung Galaxy S II, Samsung Galaxy S II LTE, the Galaxy Note, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy Tab 8.9, Galaxy Tab 7.7, and GALAXY Tab 7.0 Plus. Samsung will announce the update schedule according to the carrier, later on.
Last year, the Samsung Galaxy S line of smartphones appeared on the top ten best hottest coolest smartphone lists for 2010 and were big sellers. This year, the Samsung Galaxy S II line is a big winner too.
I have a nexus s 4G ans a samsung fascinate. While waiting for the nexus to get it's update, I installed a alpha cyanogenmod ICS rom and the fascinate is now noticeably smoother than the nexus s with stock 'google experience' gingerbread. If not for the stupid touchwiz, which totally barfs all over the modern sleekness of ICS, it would run just fine. Android as a platform will always be considered second class compared to ios as long as we have touchwiz, and sense, and motoblur, etc.