Bad news, Nexus One owners. Google's first smartphone will not be getting the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update because the device is "too old," Google told reporters on Wednesday.
Android product management director Hugo Barra told The Telegraph that the Nexus One's hardware wasn't new enough to run ICS, although it only came out in 2010.
However, Barra confirmed that the Nexus S, Google's second smartphone, would receive ICS in an over-the-air update "within weeks" after the Galaxy Nexus, the first Android 4.0 phone, launches sometime in November.
Later Rob Pegoraro, a freelance tech journalist, asked Google about ICS for Nexus One and was told "we're not planning to update that."
Owners are baffled, and mighty ticked off, about the news.
"I've always been behind everything that Google did but if they do not update their first flagship device which a lot of people paid FULL price for to support them, in what seemed like a revolution move towards telecom dependency removal, I will seriously reconsider if I want to continue trusting this company. Not updating it would mean that all they are after is getting users to update to their newer phone. I smell greed and evil!" wrote a member at the XDA Developers forum.
"Really Google? I thought you were better than that," wrote another reader at The Telegraph.
Last week, PCMag mobile analyst Sascha Segan said the latest version of Android could make fragmentation—Android's biggest problem—an even bigger issue. For more, see Why Ice Cream Sandwich Might Make Things Worse.
Google also assured developers it would eventually release the source code for ICS, which it didn't do with its tablet-centric predecessor, Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb.
For more, see 10 Coolest Android Ice Cream Sandwich Features.