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Ice Cream Sandwich, At Last
Oct. 23rd, 2012 06:57 amA year ago, I bought my Motorola Droid Bionic mobile phone, upgrading from my old Blackberry Storm. The Bionic was the first dual-core phone which could use Verizon Wireless' 4GLTE network and was, at that time, the phone with the most RAM and CPU power behind it. It ran Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread), as it was the latest & greatest version at that time.
It's been a fairly stable and solid platform. There were a few quirks --occasional data drops, sluggishness connecting/switching networks while moving, performance issues under high loads-- but it's been a decent phone for me.
Earlier this year, Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) was released into the world. And those of us with current & modern Motorola phones had to wait. And wait. And wait. Many got tired of waiting and jail-broke their phones. While I've been tempted, this is also my work phone so I value reliability a lot more than street cred of having the newest, shiniest device on the block. Since Verizon Wireless and Motorola promised it would be coming Very Soon Now, I waited paitiently for ICS.
And then they pushed back the release schedule to summer 2012. Then they missed that schedule and pushed it to fall 2012. I was no longer patient, but I waited anyway.
Last week, we heard ICS was finally being pushed out. This morning, my phone got it.
Time to download the 350MB package: about 15 minutes via my in-house wifi.
Reboot & unpackage the base OS: 15 minutes
Optimize installed apps: 10 minutes
Upgrade installed databases (calendar, contacts, etc.): 10 minutes
Upgrade installed media (mostly MP3s): 1 hour & counting... it's still working on that.
Very soon, I hope to have ICS working on my phone. Yay!
Of course, Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) has already been released... My model of phone is on the upgrade list for early 2013, but I'll believe it when I see it.
I'm next eligible for a discount phone upgrade in May 2013. I think my next phone will be a Nexus model, as that line has a more direct pipeline to the Google Android group. We'll see when the time comes.
It's been a fairly stable and solid platform. There were a few quirks --occasional data drops, sluggishness connecting/switching networks while moving, performance issues under high loads-- but it's been a decent phone for me.
Earlier this year, Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) was released into the world. And those of us with current & modern Motorola phones had to wait. And wait. And wait. Many got tired of waiting and jail-broke their phones. While I've been tempted, this is also my work phone so I value reliability a lot more than street cred of having the newest, shiniest device on the block. Since Verizon Wireless and Motorola promised it would be coming Very Soon Now, I waited paitiently for ICS.
And then they pushed back the release schedule to summer 2012. Then they missed that schedule and pushed it to fall 2012. I was no longer patient, but I waited anyway.
Last week, we heard ICS was finally being pushed out. This morning, my phone got it.
Time to download the 350MB package: about 15 minutes via my in-house wifi.
Reboot & unpackage the base OS: 15 minutes
Optimize installed apps: 10 minutes
Upgrade installed databases (calendar, contacts, etc.): 10 minutes
Upgrade installed media (mostly MP3s): 1 hour & counting... it's still working on that.
Very soon, I hope to have ICS working on my phone. Yay!
Of course, Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) has already been released... My model of phone is on the upgrade list for early 2013, but I'll believe it when I see it.
I'm next eligible for a discount phone upgrade in May 2013. I think my next phone will be a Nexus model, as that line has a more direct pipeline to the Google Android group. We'll see when the time comes.
