Droid 4 - ICS is on the way!

[AtariFX]

Motorola Droid 4 gets leaked ICS build, official Android 4.0.4 may soon follow - Engadget

Per Engadget:

We've known for quite some time that Motorola intended to push Ice Cream Sandwich to the Droid 4, but until now the waiting game continued, with no end in sight. It now appears that the smartphone maker is making serious progress on its own Motoblur-infused flavor of ICS, with a stock version of the upgrade making the rounds since last night. According to early adopters, the build seems to enable complete functionality, but upgrading early will leave your device locked to 4.0.4, with no option for future updates. So, for now, it makes sense to hang tight, but it'd be reasonable to assume that Moto-sanctioned ICS is indeed on its way to the Droid 4. Impatient owners will find everything they need at the source link after the break.

 

[djb.617]

I'm tempted. So very tempted.

 

[cron666]

don't do it, this is only good news for devs. worst outcome is a bricked device. best outcome is full ICS on your device, but this takes you off verizon's upgrade path and you will need to wait for some hackery to change it back. just wait for a verizon leak or a verizon OTA. this is just a motorola dev leak.

 

[orangechoochoo]

According to Motorola ICS is supposed to rollout Q3 which would be in a couple months.

However it says the Razor is supposed to get it in Q2 and that quarter is almost over. Droid3 will be stuck with GB.

https://forums.motorola.com/pages/00add97d6c

edit- looking through various Razr forums ICS may officially come out in a week or so.

 

[r314bd]

The comments from the early adopters of the leaked ICS build are overwhelmingly positive. Instructions on how to install it can be found here.

 

[kenji91]

I'm still fairly new to this whole custom rom thing but I'm really curious as to what ICS is like.

Right now, I'm on Eclipse 1.3 (GB) and everything is running smoothly. Can I try to flash ICS and then return to my current state if I like it better than the stock Verizon ICS? I'm probably eventually going to go with an ICS based rom but I'm not very patient.

 

[podspi]

I'm still fairly new to this whole custom rom thing but I'm really curious as to what ICS is like.

Right now, I'm on Eclipse 1.3 (GB) and everything is running smoothly. Can I try to flash ICS and then return to my current state if I like it better than the stock Verizon ICS? I'm probably eventually going to go with an ICS based rom but I'm not very patient.

There is no known way to revert back once you've flashed the leak OTA. I honestly wouldn't suggest doing it at this time. We will get it eventually, and in the meantime there are lots of great ICS roms based off of the current kernel.

 

[kenji91]

There is no known way to revert back once you've flashed the leak OTA. I honestly wouldn't suggest doing it at this time. We will get it eventually, and in the meantime there are lots of great ICS roms based off of the current kernel.

Now I'm a little confused. I just assumed that 4.x.x was "ICS" and that 2.3.x was GB.

Can you name some of these ICS roms based off of 2.3.6?

 

[cron666]

CM9
AOKP
Gummi 1.0
Anything that mentions ICS in the title, anything that states it is based on ICS.

These all work with the current GB kernel on our devices.

Not sure if the Moto leak includes a matching kernel. Makes sense it would though...

 

[podspi]

Now I'm a little confused. I just assumed that 4.x.x was "ICS" and that 2.3.x was GB.

Can you name some of these ICS roms based off of 2.3.6?

I'm no computer scientist (though I did stay at a Holiday Inn once), but operating systems essentially have multiple components, one of which (and of great importance) is the kernel. Instead of poorly explaining what a kernel is, I'll just point you here: Kernel (computing) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anyway, because the D4 has a locked bootloader, we can only use Motorola approved kernels. As a result, all current ROMs are made to run off of the kernel that came with our phones. One of the reasons the ICS roms have some persistent issues (lack of hw acceleration comes to mind) is due to the fact that we're stuck running the kernel that came with gingerbread, and can't switch to a newer kernel.

If you flash this leaked update, you get a new kernel. However, you can't flash back (why isn't clear just yet I think, I've seen a few theories thrown around), which means none of the currently available roms will work (wrong kernel). While there will probably be ROM releases for this kernel, and those roms will likely work better than the ones out now, if it turns out a different kernel is used for the real OTA, they probably won't be updated for long and you run the risk of getting stuck outside the OTA upgrade path, which means you are stuck running that software stack forever.


How serious a risk that is, is hard to say. There are a few exploits people are working on to boot 3rd party kernels, and there may be a way to downgrade/upgrade that somebody will eventually uncover.