Yesterday, Samsung made available Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich, or ICS) available to the UK networks for the Galaxy S2 (my phone of choice).

The idea is that the individual networks can now make any changes to it that they need to, test them and then release the final package.

My SG2, on O2, came with no such network branding. So, I contacted O2 yesterday to ask them when ICS would be made available.

Hi David, we’re just making sure it will provide the best possible customer experience. Watch this space!

What does that mean? Well, the delay suggests they are branding it. Is this “the best possible customer experience”? If this is the case it shows that O2 (and I’m sure the other networks are no different) are completely out of touch with people actually want. I could be wrong – I hope I’m wrong. But if they’re not, why the delay?

I’ll await the results with interest.

Meantime, Samsung have released some documents for UK SG2 owners covering the changes…

• Guide on how to upgrade and what the resulting differences will be (This is a PDF converted from the original PowerPoint format)
• Samsung GS2 manual with ICS changes

Update: 3 have released ICS for GS2 today. Meanwhile, O2 have started giving more away to queries on Twitter…

it will be rolling out early April time

That’s right… April.

Update: For those who missed it, O2 made ICS available last week. However, I didn’t receive it. After some digging, it turns out the lack of existing branding on my phone is because it’s unlocked (which I confirmed by putting a Vodafone SIM into it and finding it worked!) At this point it become more complex. For reasons not understood, Samsung are not release ICS for un-locked phones until late April. Yes, that’s the version that was provided to the networks the other week and requires no further changes. Why it’s not yet available is a good question.