Believe it or not, it’s a Huawei smartphone that gets Ice Cream Sandwich ahead of the Droid RAZR and Galaxy S II. Amazing? Maybe… but this is a mere demo for Android 4.0, so don’t get too excited. The fact still remains: a company usually known for low end devices seems to care more about its clients than some big brands, that will probably give our Gingerbread handsets a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich next summer.
Huawei Honor (model number U8860) is the handset that received the update, for now available as a demo, possibly meaning it’s in beta phase. Huawei Senior VP Yu Chengdong shared some pics of the phone running Android 4.0 via Chinese social networking site Weibo, thus confirming this update. He also said that he’s been using the Huawei Honor phone, equipped with Ice Cream Sandwich and if you click the XDA link below, you’ll probably find among others a PDF with instructions on how to install the ICS update on the device.
There are also instructions on how to rill it back to Gingerbread. This confirms once again that this ia a mere demo, used to test the look and feel of the latest Android on a new Huawei smartphone. When will bigger companies follow in the footsteps of Huawei? Well, maybe they’re releasing demo versions of ICS behind closed doors and they want to make public the real deal, or maybe they’re just lazy…