Ice Cream Sandwich, At Last

[bjarvis]

A 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.

Comments

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

But it's OPEN!!!

;-)


Actually, ICS was first out in October of 2011 (4.01 was publicly available).

Is it possible to root your phone and put JB on it now? It's *way* faster than ICS (I've got it on my Galaxy Nexus, which is 'ok' hardware by today's standards but far from cutting edge).

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Possibly. As I write this, I'm still waiting for the media library upgrade to finish on the ICS installation. I'll play with the new version a while to see how it goes and then, if I'm feeling ambitious and not on-call, I'll give it a try.

It's not enough to just want an upgrade or have the time to root & install it: I need a large enough window that I can fix/undo anything that goes wrong without being out of contact with the office. I suspect I won't have the required spare evening for another 3-4 weeks.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, if it is your only lifeline, then yeah, that's a little long to be out-of-pocket while on call.

[weekilter.livejournal.com]

Why is it for Android that updating to an updated OS doesn't happen all the time and when it does it's not even sent out all at once, but rather by the operator? With iOS if your device is capable (which most devices are that have been out for a couple years) it's there and it takes time to update, but not the huge time you've said it takes to update from what you have.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

I have the Droid Razer, also from Motorola, but I got ICS back on July 14th, and I'm with Verizon as well.

It's been pretty good, though as you say, it does not always stay in signal some days at work (as it's at T-Mobile, but seems to do fine most everywhere else.

The biggest thing is the battery usage of it and I'm not as heavy a user as some either.

lovely phone though.