14 DAY TRIAL // Chinese company Huawei has quietly released an Ice Cream Sandwich update for its enhanced version of the Ideos X5 U8800 smartphone.
The “Pro” variant is equipped with a slightly faster 1 GHz single-core processor, whereas the original model is powered by an 800 MHz Qualcomm MSM7230 CPU.
Although Huawei Ideos X5 U8800 Pro has been launched with Android 2.2 Froyo onboard, the Chinese company managed to deliver a Gingerbread update about seven months ago.
Surprisingly, Huawei decided that the Ideos X5 U8800 Pro is worthy of an Ice Cream Sandwich update, which is why those who own such a device can now upgrade it to Android 4.0.
However, the update is not pushed OTA (over the air) as one may expect. Instead, Huawei uploaded the official ROM to its servers, so users can manually download it.
The file has about 356MB in size and is available here. Aside from bringing the Android operating system to version 4.0, the update includes lots of new features and improvements.
For example, the dial option now has a smart dialing feature, and a Smart search for contacts is now available for Huawei Ideos X5 U8800 Pro users.
The phone’s boot speed has been optimized as well, along with the GPS speed. The Calendar now features an Exchange synchronization options.
The Wi-Fi performance has been enhanced and now features WPS support and DLNA. There’s also a new file manager, which allows users to browse for files in a more convenient way.
The IDEOS X5 U8800 Pro’s 5-megapixel camera received some tweaks as well, such as support for HDR, touch focus, continuous focus, panorama and UI style.
It is also worth mentioning that the smartphone now supports animated GIF and the Alarm got a new setting that allows users to optimize the Power-Off mode.
On a side note, the standard Huawei X5 U8800 model will not receive the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update due to hardware requirements.