Samsung Galaxy Note Android 4.0 upgrade goes live

Samsung has begun pushing out the Ice Cream Sandwich update to the Galaxy Note, with some owners reporting notifications that Android 4.0 is ready to be delivered over-the-air to their phone/tablet hybrid. The upgrade weighs in at just short of 319MB and includes the new version of TouchWiz, according to the message Note owner Devin Balentina received on his phone, along with the new S Note app and a new S Memo widget for the homescreen.

Those new apps and widgets come from Samsung's so-called Premium Suite, a package of new software specially designed to take advantage of the Galaxy Note's digital stylus and oversized display. There's a digital scrapbooking tool, as well as features that allow users to handwrite equations and see them solved.

Balentina is based in The Netherlands, but there are also reports of German Note owners being able to upgrade their handset via Samsung's Kies app for PC. OTA upgrades usually go out in a staggered fashion so as to ease the impact on a company's servers, so it may be some time before all Notes are upgraded; Samsung is yet to confirm its timescale for that process.

Android 4.0 will bring with it performance upgrades, though the significantly changed UI of pure Ice Cream Sandwich has been covered up by Samsung's own TouchWiz UI. More on the Note in our full review.

[via SammyHub - thanks Si!]