ICS finally lands on the Sprint Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G

Back in the day when Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was yet to hit any of the high-end devices available in the market, Korean electronics giant Samsung already confirmed that its then flagship device, the Samsung Galaxy S II, will get first dibs on what back then was the latest iteration of the Google mobile operating system. At the time of announcement, the manufacturer also confirmed that the projected rollout of ICS to the handset was during the first quarter of 2012. True to its word, Samsung managed to get the international version of the Samsung Galaxy S II upgraded to ICS back in February.

Buy the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G starting at one penny.

It is another story though for the carrier-branded versions of the handset as the update takes much longer to reach them. However, it was rumored in the past that the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G, the variant of the handset released by Sprint, will be the first handset in US shores to get a tasty treat of ICS. Back then, reports came out that the wireless provider was already in the final phase of testing the ICS update for the handset which further strengthened the speculations. Sad to say, this did not materialize because the HTC Vivid 4G from AT&T got the honors when users of the handset utilized a dialer workaround to force the smartphone in downloading and installing the ICS update. This made it the first handset in our side of the world to get the Android 4.0 refresh while users of the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G went back to waiting for the update.

A couple of days back, it was reported that the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G is about to get its OS cranked up to ICS and guess what? It is finally happening! Sprint announced via its official community boards that it has started the rollout of the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update to the handset. The update is being rolled out via OTA so expect a notification to come up on your Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G to let you know of the update’s availability. If your patience is already wearing thin, you can also dive into the Settings of your handset to get the update process started manually.  We’d love to hear what areas have received the update – so please leave a comment and share your experience with other Epic Touch 4G owners.

The ICS rollout to the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G will continue in the next month and once applied to the handset, it will crank up the version of the handset to S:D710.10S.FF18. In addition to that, it will bring goodies and treats such as Face Unlock along with a more refined user interface to the handset. Not only that, the Camera app of the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G will also get redesigned and be given panorama mode, new effects and an integrated photo editor. The Web Browser of the handset will also get enhanced and will allow a user to sync his Google Chrome bookmarks. Also, the handset will get an improved keyboard, redesigned Gmail, a new Calendar app and Google+ integration.

With this, the wait for users of the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G was indeed very long but as they say, better late than never!  Buy the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G starting at just one penny.