Sony pushing ICS to more devices next week, confirms Xperia Play won't be upgraded

Owners of the Xperia Play, it's time to curl up with a teddy bear and your favorite ice cream -- just as long as it's not in sandwich form. After the sudden and unexplained disappearance of the "PlayStation Phone" from the Android 4.0 upgrade list yesterday, Sony has followed it up with a full confirmation accompanied by the usual explanation. As you may have already guessed, the manufacturer tells us that after extensive testing, it was determined that "a consistent and stable experience, particularly with gaming, cannot be guaranteed for this smartphone on Ice Cream Sandwich... in this instance the ICS upgrade would have compromised stability." Sony went on to discuss that it received similar feedback from the developer community after releasing a beta ROM. Still, after being told repeatedly that the entire 2011 smartphone lineup would receive the update, we can't help but be a bit heartbroken by the news.
In the same breath, however, Sony also updated its timeline for the rest of the lineup that is still on schedule to receive upgrades to Ice Cream Sandwich: the Xperia arc, neo, mini, mini pro, pro, active and Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman will begin receiving their refreshes next week. The Xperia S is still on track for an end of June rollout, with the Xperia P closely following it and the Xperia U sometime in the third quarter. It's just unfortunate that the good tidings must be balanced out by equally horrible news, depending on which device you own.

LG lines up Optimus 4X HD for launch in Germany, Sweden, Great Britain, Italy and Poland

While there's already plenty of excitement around other quad-core Android phones, LG will join the party soon when its Optimus 4X HD launches in a few European countries next month. Germany, Sweden, Great Britain, Italy and Poland are all on deck in June, where this latest Optimus variant will bring a 4.7-inch 720p HD IPS LCD, Tegra 3 CPU and 2,150mAh battery coupled with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. On the software front, LG is touting its ability to take and share quick notes as well as "Media Flex" video playback. We got our hands all over this one during MWC 2012 a few months ago so until it drops in your neck of the woods, check out our gallery and video for a closer look.

Samsung Galaxy S III announced, coming with 4.8-inch 720p Super AMOLED display

After months of waiting, Samsung has officially announced the company flagship smartphone for 2012 today. Dubbed as Samsung Galaxy S III, it will go on sale in across the world starting the end of this month.
Coming to the juicy details, Samsung Galaxy S III sports a 4.8–inch 720p display, 1.4GHZ Exynos 4 quad core processor, Android 4.0, include 8-megapixel rear camera, 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera, 16 or 32GB of storage with microSD expansion, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS with GLONASS, 802.11n Wi-Fi, NFC, and a 2,100mAh battery.
As the event is happening live right now in London, we will adding more and more interesting details, so keep coming back to check more.
The previous version of the smartphone ‘Galaxy S II’ was a big hit and Samsung has shipped over 20 million units of the smartphone.

Galaxy Nexus for Verizon Wireless receives Android 4.0.4 update

Owners of the Galaxy Nexus for Verizon Wireless are now joining the proud ranks of Android 4.0.4 users. As a common practice, it seems the rollout is gradual, and many of the devices receiving the update appear to be the property of corporate stores. Nonetheless, the 39.8MB download carries a build number IMM76K and similarly brings an update to the baseband software -- which is reason to hope that the (resolved) connectivity issues reported by Android 4.0.4 users of the HSPA+ and Sprint variants will be a non-issue. Are you one of the proud and few to receive the refresh? Let us know in the comments below.

Samsung Canada begins rollout of ICS today

Let's not speak of the several months it took for Ice Cream Sandwich to finally begin showing up on Samsung devices. Rather, the fine mobile-loving folks in Canada should just take a brief moment to embrace the present and not-too-distant future, because Samsung is now officially rolling out its long-awaited Android update to the nation up north -- complete with the latest version of TouchWiz -- to select devices today and continuing throughout the rest of the quarter. The list of featured products include the Galaxy S II (along with its LTE, LTE HD and X variants), Galaxy Note and several Galaxy Tabs, such as the 7.0, 7.0 Plus, 8.9 and 10.1. Of course, not everyone will get the beloved installation invitation today, since these large-scale rollouts seem to take a healthy amount of time. If you simply can't wait, it couldn't hurt to give the 'ol manual update method a try.

Acer Iconia Tab A500 getting ICS update in India

Acer has started rolling out the much awaited Android 4.0.3 update for Iconia Tab A500 users in India. This update is available OTA and is 395MB in size.
All you have to do is, wait for the OTA notification to show up on your tablet and follow the instructions. Ice Cream Sandwich aka Android 4.0 brings several new features to the tablet including new People app, performance enhancements, and UI changes.
Do let us know about you experience with the update in the comments.

Sony Xperia ST21i with ICS leaks out, shows off its chunky physique

It may not be as sleek as its S kin, or even as powerful as that mid-level U, but this recently leaked Xperia ST21i might just have enough goodies to lure a handful of you in. According to Techblog, this thick, 3.2-inch unit packs some pretty run-of-the-mill features, including an 800MHz Qualcomm chip paired with 512MB of RAM, a 3-megapixel shooter to help with those Instagram shots and a low 480 x 320 screen res. Unlike a few of the other Xperias still waiting to be served, though, the ST21i has already been filled with a portion of Google's famous ICS. No word yet on when the pudgy device will see a legit introduction, but until then you can peek at some extra photos at the source link below.

Google starts selling Galaxy Nexus on Google Play store in US

It is one of those days, when I envy the Android fans in United States, the reason? Well, Google has re-opened its online store to sell Galaxy Nexus directly to consumers in the country.
The search giant is currently offering three versions of the smartphone to consumers – Unlocked, with Verizon and with Sprint. While the unlocked version has been priced at USD 399.99 (yes!), the contract versions will cost USD199.99 with a two-year commitment.
This is the second-time, Google is trying to directly sell a Nexus smartphone to consumers, the first attempt with Nexus One in 2010 was a big flop. We hope company has fixed the service and other issues this time and consumers are not disappointed with their purchase from Google store.
The Galaxy Nexus can now be grabbed by the US consumers from the devices section in Google Play store. As this section is called ‘devices’, it looks like we are going to see more such smartphones and tablets on sale in the coming days.
For those, who have been living in a cave, Galaxy Nexus is the company reference smartphone for the Ice Cream Sandwich release of Android and comes with a 1.2GHz dual core processor, 1GB RAM, Android 4.0.4, 16GB of internal storage, NFC and 5MP rear camera.

Transformer Prime gets power of reincarnation with Team Win Recovery Project 2.1.2

Known affectionately as Twrp, this handy utility allows you to backup and recover your Android world even as you flit effortlessly between different custom ROMs. Two-point-oh worked great on a limited selection of devices, like the Nexus S, Kindle Fire and TouchPad, but this latest update brings improved support for Honeycomb tablets and ICS handsets like the Galaxy Nexus, while also doing its thing on the Transformer Prime for the first time. Team Win has even introduced a OpenRecoveryScript function, which lets apps influence the recovery process in order to preserve even more consciousness across rebirths. Now, if only we could root karma.

Samsung Unpacked 2012 app lands in Google Play store

After teasing us a little more with the video yesterday, Samsung has released the official UNPACKED event app in Google Play store. This app is your guide for the launch of next Galaxy smartphone from Samsung on May 3.
Dubbed as SAMSUNG mobile UNPACKED 2012, it comes with the usual goodies like What’s UNPACKED?, Event Schedule, Event Location, Teaser video, UNPACKED Live, Press Release, and New Product. The last three will only be available once the press event starts on May 3.
You can grab the download from here. It is said to be giving some problems with ICS devices, so you might want to wait for a fix.