So much for one last surprise from LG at next week’s Mobile World Congress. After announcing both the Optimus Vu and Optimus 3D Max, they went ahead and officially outed the Optimus 4X HD as well. The phone is everything that has been rumored so far, so let’s recap quickly and then get to your thoughts.

The LG Optimus 4X HD will rock a 4.7″ IPS HD display, 1.5GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8MP rear camera, 1.3MP front camera, 16GB internal storage, 2150mAh battery, and will run Ice Cream Sandwich. Not bad, right? And with the Tegra 3, don’t automatically assume that this device will suffer from battery life issues either. As we have written a number of times now, the quad-core architecture that NVIDIA uses, includes a 5th companion core that they are calling “4-PLUS-1.” This companion core allows the phone to idle and save battery during activities that do not need heavy processing. This device should exceed your battery life expectations.

The device will ship to Europe first some time in the 2nd quarter. U.S. rollout has not been announced, but if we go off of last year’s similar device from LG, the Optimus 2X, T-Mobile was able to grab it and rename it the LG G2X. LG G4X HD this time around, anyone?

Sooooo, your thoughts? Being an LG device, does this interest you?

Full press release.

It may be hard to believe, but there are devices still out there that have not received the update to Ice Cream Sandwich yet. I know, it’s unbelievable. The Toshiba Thrive and the Acer Iconia tablets are just two of the devices on that list. Well, you can now mark off the Iconia tablet, as Acer has begun to push out ICS to the A200 tablet starting last Friday. Congrats, Iconia owners.

As for the Thrive, owners have until the end of Spring to receive it on their devices, so the wait could be a couple more months. Word from Toshiba’s PR Manager is that both the 10.1″ and 7″ variations of the device will receive the Ice Cream love around that time frame. Could be worse – you could own a Thunderbolt.

Via: Computer World, PC Mag

As you know, Ice Cream Sandwich is supposed to be the Android release that merges the tablet and phone experiences. The OS was built to be able to scale no matter what the screen size and hopefully help end the ridiculous “fragmentation” argument that competitors cannot seem to let go of. In fact, if you go into the Android SDK and start messing with resolutions, you can view both the tablet and phone versions of ICS to see what I’m talking about.

One ROM developer by the name patrick decided to work with that multi-screensize idea of Android 4.0 and see kind of magic he could create. His goal was to create a tablet version for the Galaxy Nexus. Guess what? He did it. And no, this isn’t just a build.prop edit as some have tried in the past.

The actual phone.apk is struggling to work (you can’t make calls), but everything else apparently works just fine. With help from the community, I’m sure they will get the voice issues sorted out at some point. For now though, feel free to take it for a spin and see what your phone would look like as tablet. Make a backup! 

And here is your DROID RAZR bomb for the week before it even really gets started. A DroidRzr forum poster by the name dragon974 posted a massive screenshot session of his RAZR running what appears to be an almost complete Ice Cream Sandwich build from Verizon and Motorola. We say “almost complete” because this thing includes all of VZW’s bloatware, the special sorting options in the app drawer that were included in previous Blur builds, and skinning in some specific places like the lock screen.

The Android version is 4.0.3 and the Blur build is 6.7.407. What has us confused though, is the fact that Motorola left off all of their Verizon devices from their ICS timeline that was released last week, yet this thing looks close to completion. Is that because both companies are working tirelessly to push an update well before Q2 or Q3 to phones like the RAZR? Wouldn’t that be a treat. It’s definitely odd that all of those devices didn’t make the initial cut, so maybe there is something to them releasing updates to select phones even sooner. This build in particular looks to be coming along quite nicely. Jump past the break to see it all. 

Oh you thought HTC was going to leave you out Thunderbolt owners? OK truthfully, we did too. But that has all changed! According to their official Facebook page, not only will the Thunderbolt see Ice Cream Sandwich, but so will the Rhyme and Incredible 2. Yessir, HTC doin’ big thangs.

No timeframe for release was given, but they have confirmed that upgrades “are planned.” 

Swype has officially launched support for Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Nexus. We have been waiting for quite a while as they worked the kinks out of what was reported to be a resolution issue, even though we have been seeing hacked versions for quite some time. To download the app, just head on over to the Swype Beta site and sign up, then just download the installer and take it from there.

Via: Swype Beta

Cheers Josh!

A statement regarding the eventual update of the original Eee Pad Transformer to Ice Cream Sandwich has been issued to concerned customers via the Asus Facebook page. The Transformer Prime has been enjoying ICS for a bit now, so we can understand the impatience some Transformer owners may be experiencing.

Asus’ statement:

Dear fellow Asus members, we would like to say that we appreciate all the support we see in our Asus Facebook page every day. It makes our contributions worthwhile and fulfilling.

We are informed that the ICS upgrade for TF101 will be ready within theFeb/March 2012 period. You will be able to receive the upgrade notification via FOTA once we have a confirmation date.

We thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.

So, February/March time frame? That’s not bad. Seeing as how we are already half way through the month, March is right around the corner. Just a little bit longer, folks.

Via: Android Police