Sony has announced that its tablets, the Tablet S and Tablet P, will receive upgrades to Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.
The tech giant, however, isn't yet saying when Ice Cream Sandwich will hit its tablets, of which only the Tablet S is on sale.
The Tablet S, which features a tapered shape resembling a rolled-back magazine and a 9.4-inch touch screen, went on sale in September at a price of $500.
Sony quietly confirmed a forthcoming Ice Cream Sandwich update for its Tablet S and Tablet P devices last week through its online community forum. This is not Sony's first ICS announcement, as the company divulged plans to roll out Android 4.0 for its Sony Ericsson Xperia Phones starting in March.
We got our hands on the Sony Tablet S and were impressed by the comfortable, ergonomic design. Lead mobile analyst Sascha Segan described it as "one of the best-looking Android tablets around" with its wedge-shaped, magazine-like design.
But the media giant's tablet failed to wow us when it came to performance, features, and content offerings. Ultimately, the Sony Tablet S came up short when compared with top-selling tablets like the Apple iPad 2 and the Amazon Kindle Fire.
Currently, Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone is the only device on the market running Google's latest mobile OS, but companies like LG have been jumping on the ICS bandwagon, announcing their own plans for software updates to various devices.
Thus far, phones have been the major players in the Ice Cream Sandwich race, but tablet news is also starting to heat up. Earlier this month, Google promised an Android tablet of "the highest quality" in the next sixth months. Google made its intentions clear, targeting tablet juggernaut Apple and promising a "brutal competition" between the two companies.
Ice Cream Sandwich update announcements have been a bit of a mess for smartphone and tablet manufacturers alike. Many device makers have balked when it comes to the new OS—case in point, Samsung's announcement earlier this month that Android 4.0, when combined with the company's TouchWiz UI enhancements, proves too much for the 1GHz Cortex A8-powered Galaxy S line, which would therefore not be upgraded. Backlash from customers, however, has reportedly motivated Samsung to "investigate ways to try and make it work."
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