You May Have an Update Available for Your Samsung Galaxy Tab

You may have an update available for your Samsung Galaxy Tab, but you may not know about it.

The Wait for Ice Cream Sandwich

Ever since hearing about the Ice Cream Sandwich release of Android, I checked to see if my wi-fi version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 would get the upgrade.  The information I found suggested that I would get the update, but when it would come out was uncertain, and the release date changed over time.  The last update suggested late August or early September, but I hadn't seen anything, so I did another search this morning to see if the date had changed.  As it turned out, Ice Cream Sandwich was finally rolling out to some people.

A Surprise Update

I did not see any notification on my Galaxy Tab about an update, figured that it might be a gradual roll-out, so decided to manually check for an update under Settings.

I was surprised to find an agreement clause for updates.  So I went through it, agreed, and was then presented with a screen to sign in with my Samsung account or register for one.  This leads me to a couple of questions:

1. Why do I need an account to get updates?
2. Why wasn't I asked to set this up when initially activating my Galaxy Tab? (Or did it not come up due to the issues I had initially activating my Galaxy Tab?)
3. Why isn't checking for updates enabled by default? This is a big concern if there is a security update.

As it turned out, this was a Honeycomb update that took me from 3.1 to 3.2.  This made me wonder why I didn't get an email notification from Samsung, considering that I already had an account with them set up and had registered the Galaxy Tab.  That install took a while, and once complete and back on my main screen, was presented with a message about an update that needed to be done by August 28 or I might not be able to use the Samsung Media Center.  Not a big deal for me, as I don't use Samsung Media Center, but went ahead and started the 300+ MB download of the update.

Ice Cream Sandwich at Last!

This big update, which took longer to download but was faster to install than the Honeycomb update, ended up being the Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade!  Everything appears to have gone smoothly, but I haven't gone in to explore Ice Cream Sandwich yet and try out my downloaded apps.

So if you own a Samsung Galaxy Tab, you may want to manually check for an update in case you have the same situation that I did.  You may find a tasty ice cream treat waiting for you!