Happy to report that I have just successfully upgraded my European GSM Nexus S (i9023) to Android 4.03 Ice Cream Sandwich, manually. I didn’t want to wait for the Other The Air (OTA) update to be rolled out in my territory (Jordan).

I was a little reluctant to use the instructions on Android Central because they mentioned that the update was intended for i9020T T-Mobile Nexus S. But after reading on a Austrian site that people have used that same update for their European devices I decided to go ahead and do it.

It’s really super easy. The change in the look and feel of the Nexus S user interface is quite dramatic, right from the unlock screen. And by the way, the Nexus S now runs Android 4.03, while the newer Google flagship phone the Galaxy Nexus runs 4.03, so we Nexus S owners are one step ahead.

A very important aspect of this update is the addition of Arab language support to Android, officially. This was one of the glaring omission of Android Gingerbread. Yes I know that custom ROMs with Arabic support exist, but I really thought that it was crazy for Google not to support Arabic input so far. Androids Arabization, however, does not go as far as the Nokia N9 goes, which has full Arabic menus/user interface.

One little disappointment so far is that the Nexus S does not seem to have the face unlock feature that was shown as a cool feature of the Galaxy Nexus. Oh well..

Excited to explore this biggest upgrade of the Android OS so far.


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One response to “Upgrade your European Nexus S i9023 to Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.03”

  1. z Avatar
    z

    Can you boot into recovery and tell me if you have the black screen issue? I’m hesitating to manually update my i9023, I’m not 100% it’s the same update as for i9020T.