We’ve been informed by a reader that the Samsung Galaxy S on Optus is starting to receive the Android 2.3.6 “Value Pack” upgrade. Samsung’s decision to not upgrade the Galaxy S to Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” means that the value pack upgrade is as close to it as owners are going to get to 4.0 in terms of features.

It brings to the table a few of ICS’s key features such as face unlock, faster performance and an all-round UI clean up/improvement. The full list of features (not confirmed by Optus) can be found below. The update is rolling out over-the-air so be sure to check your phone to see if it’s ready for you. Make sure your battery is near full and you’re on a stable connection.

* Face Unlock like from Galaxy Nexus
* Photo Editor like from Galaxy S2
* Lockscreen like from Galaxy Note
* Improved Camera App
* Ability to take picture while taking videos
* Fast auto-rotation response
* New Lockscreen sounds
* Enhanced stock browser
* Smoother and faster Gallery 3D
* Higher FPS rate in 3D
* Minor changes in the UI
* New Kernel with large RAM (Total RAM: 364)
* Galaxy S2 ICS Lockscreen
* TouchWiz 4 integrated
* Improvements in the interface of the camera + can now take pictures while recording a video
* Auto-rotation is faster (from vertical to horizontal)
* Improvements in speed
* Improved performance of GPU
* Some applications of Google updated
(source)

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I upgrade my Galaxy S to 2.3.6 and the battery live has been improved a lot !!. But some times it get frozen and restart itself. Any one with the same symptoms?

goon

Value pack is stable, similar look to gingerbread (not ics). i upgraded via kies. Not the worst update one can have…….

Ray

Also it would be nice and helpful if the carrier actually let us know there is an update available by SMS or email, as most phones would have either or both of these.

Ray

All very well, but how the hell do you get kies to work and install the update???? On Virgin Galaxy S i9000.

poc

use odin3 v1.83 with the firmware from sammobile.Just make sure pda is ticked and you know where you have extracted the firware on your PC when you click on pda to look for the tar file.You can’t go wrong….Keis is the biggest load of crap.

David Klaverstyn

I just installed. It was
not available over-the-air for me. I have to install Kies. I’m with
VirginMobile. Looks nice. A little different. We’ll see how performance goes
over the next few days.

Krzysztof_Bryk

it rolled out 6th june
JW6 XSA (australia unbranded) 6th June ->https://twitter.com/SamsungUpdates/status/210437174427009024
JW6 OPS (australia optus) 20th June ->https://twitter.com/SamsungUpdates/status/215408658325045249

chris

I would prefer this on my GS2, ICS is buggy at best, GB is much more stable.

Phoenix

I have to agree wholeheartedly – installing the official ICS on the GS2 was a big mistake. Anyway, can anyone comment on the stability of this ‘Value Pack’ on the SGS?

Simon

I just got my S3 I gave my wife the Galaxy S.
Update went well (though still had typical KIES issues).
It is good to see they are still releasing updates this far along and that the carriers are following through 🙂

Tim

With all those features they should just call it ICS … Just A watered down version of the ICS software like Apple does with iOS. That would hopefully shut up those bitching and stop the iphone fan comments “my phone is 3yrs old and it is getting iOS6, Samsung is sh#t. ”

Thanks Samsung. I got the SGS3 now but am happy the “old girl” gets some love still.