I dont understand it

[Robcy]

Sammy says that the Galaxy S will not get ICS. The Nexus S will. I get the whole touchwiz on the GS, and the pure android on the NS. But are they not basically the same Hardware. Why not pure android on the GS? Could this be done using the NS OS to make a pure ICS ROM for the GS?

 

[ratsttam]

Samsungs big thing, is TouchWiz. Frankly, the things it adds are nice over the base AOSP of the same versions. I will agree that ICS adds a lot of the nicer TouchWiz type things.

Problem is, that TouchWiz takes up a good chunk more space than an AOSP based rom. And all hardware the same, the NS4g has a different partition table than the Epic (and GS line).

It's not as easy for Samsung to move the partitions around, and it would make an Over The Air update anything but impossible.

Now that said, it's not unheard of (although uncommon) for a manufacturer to give up parts of their skinning, I recall reading about an HTC that they decided to leave out some parts to make GB fit, and made it an optional upgrade (no nagging notification about it). And my old Samsung Intercept, when it was upgraded to Froyo, was knocked to AOSP (made me miss the toggle bar in the status area, as well as being able to type a name in the dialer). BUT it made Froyo fit. There may have been others, and they may make it happen, if enough people message the right people about it

Also keep in mind that ANY updating of the GS line was optional on Samsungs part. The Epic shipped with Eclair. It was upgraded to Froyo, and AGAIN to Gingerbread. Only newer devices (shipped with GB I think?) are subject to the 18 month support cycle that Google is making happen.