With the Galaxy Nexus launch now over and successful, the Samsung team is hard at work on preparing Ice Cream Sandwich for several devices in the Galaxy family. Ice Cream Sandwich brings new enhancements to multitasking, memory and power management, notifications, and improvements for devices with the appropriate hardware including face unlock and Near Field Communication. Unfortunately, this upgrade announcement comes with disappointment as Samsung turns its back on the Google Alliance pledge for 18 months of upgrades when a device ships.

According to Samsung's official announcement on their SamsungTomorrow blog, the following devices will be receiving official updates to the Ice Cream Sandwich platform:

• GALAXY S II
  
• GALAXY S II LTE
  
• GALAXY Note
  
• GALAXY R
  
• GALAXY Tab 10.1
  
• GALAXY Tab 8.9
  
• GALAXY Tab 7.7
  
• GALAXY Tab 7.0 Plus

The Nexus S has already received its upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich through Google.

In May of 2011, several manufacturers publicly signed on to the Google Update Alliance at the Google I/O conference. Members of the Update Alliance - Samsung included - pledged to provide updates to the most current Android OS for 18 months after a device was released. If you look at the above list, you may notice some devices missing. Fairly recent devices such as the Samsung Droid Charge, a Verizon Wireless LTE flagship phone released in late Spring, were left off despite having specifications very close to or even equal to the Nexus S.

When PC Magazine asked about the situation, Samsung had the following to say:

Quote

PC Magazine's questions about several of Samsung's phones were ignored, as was their question about Samsung honoring its Google I/O pledge.

In an industry driven by the bottom line and the next big thing, sites such as RootzWiki exist to make sure that you get your investment out of your phone when providers and manufacturers decide not to honor their promises to their customers on a timely basis if at all. Samsung phones as far back as the Fascinate currently have in-progress builds of Ice Cream Sandwich available through the mod community and more are on the way. We encourage Samsung owners to visit our Samsung forums and check out your specific phone's development section to see if your phone is going to benefit from the hard work of our developer community.

Failure to honor commitments tarnish the industry and erode customer confidence. It is our hope that Samsung will prove itself honorable and honor its Google Update Alliance pledge.