From the time Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) was announced, developers have been itching to mod the new code to work with their own devices. It seems a stable version is now available on the Motorola XOOM. This is currently only for the WiFi version, but some claim to have it working on their 3G/4G versions.
There are plenty of screenshots available from razorbladex401, the XDA developer behind the entire project. When making such an upgrade, it would be foolish to forget about making a android backup. The ROM seems stable, but there will undoubtedly be a few kinks that will need to be worked out.
There’s a particularly great feeling of updating to the latest version of Android’s OS. It may be because it upgrades so quickly, but mostly because you know you’re one of the few to take advantage of all the new features. I’m not sure if Google Wallet is still offering a free $10 for signing up on an Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) device, but those of you taking the plunge to ICS on your own XOOM should definitely let us know.
[XDA Thread: Here]
[via Android Authority]
Ics rooms have been on the Xoom for a month and 4G does work in the team EOS rom
ICS was pushed to my wifi xoom tonight, it’s fantastic!
I’m curious of what theme the article poster has? And which weather widget they are using. Thanks!
How do I get the update for my xoom?
I just spent about a week with ICS Wi-Fi 3G/4G Nightly version I got off XDA. A couple things, first I have little experience with these devices and my review of ICS is done from an end users perceptive.
As someone who is new to tablets and their technology deciding to change the OS on my Xoom appeared to be a mountainous undertaking with many warnings of “beware” and lots of denying liability CYA, many new acronyms and buzz words like “brick, rooted,” with DOS windows and unix like commands. After doing much reading and being warned multiple times about the woes of unlocking and voiding ones warranty, I felt it was something I had to do.
To make a long story short I did manage to get the Xoom into an unusable state on several occasions, I did manage to unlock and root the device and get ICS running. The first thing I noticed was an issue with it acquiring an IP address, which it finally did and if you de-selected the Wi-Fi option in settings the same issue occurred when turning it back on. I tried installing games that used 3D, the Nvidia Tegra chip. I tried about six and all failed to load, some said they didn’t support ICS yet. I’ve read others mention how fast ICS is on their Xoom, I found no “noticeable” difference in speed. The deal breaker for me was the fact it was locking up frequently and I had to do a hard boot to recover.
My Xoom is currently back to a factory stock build and updated to 3.2.4. I must say I’ve learned a lot about tablets and their operating systems and probably more than I wanted to know.
Through this learning exercise, I learned that it is still possible to destroy hardware with software, i.e. brick a Xoom? You would think a failsafe would be developed that prevents damage like that.
I learned that I would have been better off leaving things as they were because I’ve returned to Honeycomb. As far as ICS is concerned I’m not sure if it’s not quite ready for prime time or its out ahead of app developers or a combination of both but something didn’t seem fine-tuned. I hope ICS shakes out, it seems like a positive logical step forward. I hope the Wi-Fi version that they’re rolling out has less issues than the version I used.
The main thing I learned and continue to learn, .. is sometimes you’re better to wait a while till things settle out, you avoid being a crash test dummy by doing so.
The xda rom is a hack. As such it can’t be compared to an official release. The core of ICS is open source but that’s like installing a windows OS without any DRIVERS for the OS to understand what hardware and peripherals you are using. Sure android 4 has some drivers like universal HID usb support but for the most part it has no drivers built into the OS (which makes sense; why would a Sony Handset have to carry camera drivers for the Xoom’s camera?)
The downsite of this is that as customers we are fully dependant on the manufacturer releasing either full documentation of the hardware (very unlikely) so the good people at XDA can compile a better product…. or a verified (drivers packed) version of ICS is sent out which is then distributed at the companys discretion via OTA.
Motorola is not known to be the quickest to deploy new android updates to their customers. But what’s the alternative? At the time being it seems to be a general practice of phone/tablet companies to hold back on updates, specially now that unlike 3.0 the source has been out in the wild for quite some time already.
When will Ice Cream come out for the Xoom 4g/3g models?
I have a xoom wifi. Still waiting for the is update. Been checking every day for it, to no avail. Can I do it manually?
I am in the US with xoom wifi. My xoom android version still shows 3.2.6 but I already have “play book” and play store in widgets. Checked settings but system shows up to date. Should I just wait for ice cream to show or is there anything I need to do to hasten the update?
So when the hell are we going to get this official update? It’s been how long now?