By Chris Chang, posted Dec 12, 2011 at 3:53 PM, 2,555 views,

Huawei Honor: The First Ice Cream Sandwich Android Phone in China (video)

Huawei, who manufactures dongles and cheap Androids, is now offering a public Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) update for its flagship phone Honor. Perhaps the most interesting part is that the update comes less than a month after the release of ICS’ source code, and well in advance of some other Chinese manufacturers. Check out the video after the break, to see how ICS works on the Honor.

This might be the first time you’re hearing of Honor. Honor is Huawei’s most powerful Android phone and it comes with 1.4GHz processor, 4 inch display and 8MP rear camera with 2MP front shooter. The phone runs Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread by default. In order to take care of the anxious Android users, Huawei today posted a “demo-build” of the ICS update to its support page, in both simplified Chinese, as well as the standard suite of languages included in the Android ICS pack. Meanwhile, the company is increasingly sharing the official beta update to do the testing publicly. According to Huawei, the demo build is stable enough for daily usage.

We do not actually think Huawei is ahead of Samsung or any other Chinese companies putting out ICS. As far as we know, Meizu and Xiaomi already ported ICS on their Android flagship phones but they are not releasing any updates to the public yet. Of course, they can release ICS fast just like Huawei, but the software needs to be fully tested to make sure it is stable enough for daily usage. And here’s a question. Do they have the Honor for sale now? No. The Honor will go on sale next week on China Unicom, according to a statement from Huawei:

“Huawei Honor will start to hit shelves at China Unicom next week,”

What’s more, it is going to be available this month in select markets. So, this means that the ICS update is out even before the launch of the Honor… Well, it may be a fair play to Huawei for being so quick to release ICS, but the company has also given a failsafe in the form of full Gingerbread ROM to rollback… Just in case things go wrong with the Honor ICS update.

One More Thing

The Honor will have a new color. White. Looks pretty nice.

Source: Huawei via PCpop