Is today Ice Cream Sandwich day or what? Sure, AT&T may have potentially flubbed its rollout of the operating system to Galaxy S II handsets, but not everybody is screwing it up. Sony gets it right, even if they pissed off everybody who bought the Xperia Play.
Sony announced today the availability of Android 4.0 on the Xperia S. This is the latest phone from the 2011 Xperia line to be upgraded to ICS. The ICS update will be available over the air, via Wi-Fi or through a USB connection on your PC. If you’re going the PC route, it’s easiest to update over the web via Xperia Update.
For those upgrading to ICS, here’s what you can look forward to:
In a super cool move, Sony has also included an update to their media software with the ICS firmware download as well. Here’s what you’ll get:
The “WALKMAN” application blends the best of signature Sony audio technology with social features; to discover the music your friends like and share personal favorites. Facebook integration gives you a visual way to interact with content – accessing album art, artist images and information, directly from Gracenote.
The “Album” application brings new intuitive ways to sort and browse high quality photos and videos in blazing speed, as well as providing instant viewing, commenting and sharing of photos on Facebook and other online albums, leveraging the great camera capabilities of Xperia S.
The “Movies” application streamlines the playback and viewing of movies in high quality audio and video, whilst using intelligent database search to grab movie posters and information for a richer experience.
As far as I can tell, that’s a pretty sweet update. You’ll be able to get the update today or throughout the next few weeks as it rolls out to all customers around the world. You’ll receive a notification to download the 200MB update once its ready in your area.
For those who are more visually minded, Sony has created a quick video that shows off all the new features that ICS brings to the Xperia S. Here’s hoping it hits your device today.