Samsung Confirms: No Value Pack, No Ice Cream Sandwich For Galaxy S And Tab

We may earn a commission for purchases made using our links.

A Samsung spokesperson has told The Next Web that it will not bring any major updates to last year’s best-selling Galaxy S smartphone and the original Galaxy Tab, finally putting rumors of a ‘Value Pack’ update to an end.

After leaving out the Galaxy S and Tab when initially revealing its plans for ICS-updates three weeks ago, Samsung took to its Korean blog to explain that TouchWiz and other customizations would not run smoothly on the limited amount of memory available on the two older devices. Following a huge backlash, a report on a Korean website revealed that Samsung was reconsidering the move. Only a day later, another Korean website claimed that Samsung was preparing a Value Pack update, originally misunderstood to be adding ICS-specific features on top of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but later corrected by one of our readers to be an actual Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich version with some TouchWiz-specific features removed. Well, no more.

What makes this especially disappointing is that both Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab are perfectly capable of running stock, AOSP Android 4.0, as evidenced by various ports in our forums and the similarly-specced Nexus S already getting its update, thus unnecessarily obsoleting a device that isn’t even two years old. At the very least, to preserve its software differentiations, Samsung could’ve opted to go ahead with the planned TouchWiz ‘Lite’ version, similar to what HTC has done with its Gingerbread update for the HTC Desire.

But then, for a handset maker that gains absolutely nothing by providing software updates, there’s arguably little economic incentive to do so.