We have some good news and some not-so-good news for HTC owners today. The company, like some others, has taken to creating a dedicated page detailing which devices will be updated to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The good news is that the Desire HD will be updated, a device that, along with the Desire Z, seemed to be in limbo. While the latter won’t be getting ICS (at least not officially) due to its low memory count, the Desire HD’s 768MB RAM ensures that it is every bit up to the task.
The upgrade will come in the form of Sense 3.6, the same software that we’ve seen on the ICS upgrade for the HTC Sensation, Raider and Amaze (coming next week).
Unfortunately the same courtesy is not being given to the HTC Flyer or Jetstream, despite having sufficiently-powerful hardware for Ice Cream Sandwich. This is likely due to the rather tepid reception both devices had in the market, though it could also be because Honeycomb was and is a lot more functional than Gingerbread.
Other devices that won’t be getting ICS: the Status and Wildfire S. The EVO 3D will be updated to Android 4.0 sometime in June or July. HTC also tries to answer the perennial question of why some carriers take longer to approve their updates than others: “Due to localization, testing, and partner approvals, updates do not roll out to all devices at the same time. For devices on a wide variety of carriers and in many countries, rollouts can take up to 45 days from the initial update to reach everyone. Our goal is to make sure that an upgrade provides an equal or improved customer experience and that means a high standard of quality for hardware compatibility, adapting device or carrier specific customizations, testing by HTC and partners, addressing device hardware constraints, and many other factors.”
