Samsung and T-Mobile have been raising the ire of their customers lately, due to a conspicuous lack of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) upgrade plans. This has finally been remedied. We now know that the Galaxy S II (model SGH-T989), Galaxy S Blaze 4G (model SGH-T769), Galaxy Tab 7.0 + (model SGH-T869), and Galaxy Tab 10.1 (model SGH-T859) have all been given tickets to attend Google’s ICS party.
Things aren’t all roses however, as no dates have been given—not even a “next quarter” or “second-half 2012”—though I think it safe to assume that we will be seeing the updates before the year is out, or more likely before mid-summer.
On a harsher note, T-Mobile recently made it known that it will start blocking tethering users who aren’t ponying up. With Gingerbread—according to T-Mobile—T-Mobile’s monitoring software wasn’t up to snuff, so it let the occasional tethering freeloader get away with it. This will no longer be the case, at least for ICS users. The first users set to feel this pain are those of the HTC Sensation 4G, which is slated for its own upgrade to ICS this week.
Anybody caught using tethering—at least anybody caught using it to any serious degree—will be required to cough up an extra $14.95 a month, or risk losing tethering and hotspot abilities until they do. Still, this is a better deal than AT&T, who so kindly auto-enrolls you in a tethering plan if it detects you using the feature. Fortunately, this has only been announced for the built-in tethering feature, “undetectable” 3rd-party apps may very well still work and root-only apps are almost certain to do so.
[Samsung via Slash Gear | Android Community]
