Nexus Prime and Ice Cream Sandwich launch postponed
Android Ice Cream Sandwich, which was set to launch on 11 October alongside the Nexus Prime, has been postponed by Samsung and Google.
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The latest version of Android, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich has been postponed. An official release date of 11 October was earlier leaked by Google's very own Android Developers YouTube account, but Google and Samsung have decided to hold the launch event at a later date.
The Android update was scheduled to coincide with the unveiling of Samsung's superpowered new Nexus Prime phone, but the two companies have agreed "it is just not the right time to announce a new product," Pocket-lint reports.
No other reason for the postponement was given, but it may well be out of respect for Steve Jobs, whose funeral will probably take place around the same time. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were among those to pay tribute to the former Apple boss.
A placeholder video entitled 'Android ICS Launch' for the live-stream of the 11 October event was spotted by TechCrunch, and has since been taken down.
We've known about the joint Samsung and Google event for a while now. The YouTube placeholder erased all doubt in our minds about ICS, so now we can go about debating what features we're likely to see and what the Prime will be like.
Ice Cream Sandwich hopes to bring together the phone-sized Android Gingerbread with the tablet-specific Honeycomb and is set to improve apps by making it easier for developers to get them working across the many and varied devices that run Android. It's not going to be a radical overhaul otherwise, but will add some subtle user-interface tweaks and a few helpful extras, such as updated multi-tasking and better camera features.
The Nexus Prime has also been causing a lot of buzz at the moment. It's set to be the first handset running ICS and is rumoured to be sporting a whopping 4.6-inch AMOLED screen with a 720p resolution as well as a lightning-fast processor.
The Prime is set to be with us not long after the iPhone 4S and if the rumoured specs are true, it will certainly be giving Apple's new baby a run for its money -- perhaps collecting up those Apple fans who were annoyed at not being given a larger iPhone 5 like they wanted.
We're all very excited to see what comes out of the event, a new date for which will be announced soon. Make sure you keep it CNET UK for all the latest news.