Hi folks, just wanted to give you an update on where I am at with testing the early alpha port of Ice Cream Sandwich (or ICS as it is now being abbreviated) to the Samsung Galaxy S.
Initially, I was testing Galnet MIUI as I believed that was a proper implementation of ICS but it was actually the MIUI fully customised ROM containing the ICS kernel (everything else appeared to be the same as mainstream MIUI). So I ended up turfing that and going with a port being tracked on XDA Developers here.
At the time of writing I have just flashed the Alpha 6 build of the ICS port and it is certainly much better than Alpha 4 that I had tried a day or two ago. A truckload of work has gone into it already to make it usable but there are a few things still to fix up including Bluetooth, GPS, camera and video recording. As such, I probably wouldn’t recommend it for regular use on your main phone just yet but if you have a secondary backup/test phone then knock yourself out. I have encountered a few reboots and screen glitches (things to be expected from stable builds).
Anyway, the interface has had more polish and shine applied over and beyond what we have seen in the 2.0 releases (Eclair, Froyo & Gingerbread) with some similarities with what has been seen in Honeycomb on the Android tablets (such as the screen unlock mechanism and screen transitions). The interface is still quite fluid even on an older device like the Samsung Galaxy S with its single core CPU. You can now also take screenshots by holding down the volume down button and power buttons simultaneously which will come in handy.
Speaking of screenshots, here are some to tide you over:
About Phone
Phone Dialer
Mobile Browser (Not Chrome Though)
Google Talk
Google Plus
Home Screen
Storage Utilisation
In the meantime, Samsung hasn’t formally announced a release for the aging Samsung Galaxy S but there does appear to be a release on the cards for the Samsung Galaxy S 2. We’ll see how that pans out but of course the developer community is pulling together to make it happen unofficially.
Follow Us!