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Josh P. Miller/CNET
Owners of Samsung’s Galaxy S smartphone and the 7-inch Galaxy Tab tablet will finally receive an upgrade to Android 2.3 Gingerbread starting very soon.
Samsung announced today that the Gingerbread upgrade would also extend to its Galaxy Ace, Gio, Fit, and mini phones.
The company will kick off with an upgrade to the Galaxy S in the U.K. and Nordic countries starting as soon as the middle of this month. The upgrade would then travel through the rest of the world, reaching other European countries, North America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and then other regions.
Users will be able to upgrade their devices through Kies, Samsung’s device management and synchronization software.
Through the switch from Android 2.2 Froyo to Gingbread, Samsung is promising faster performance, a better designed UI, and more powerful 3D graphics. Gingerbread also sports a variety of other improvements and new features over its predecessor, including a redesigned virtual keyboard, better power management, a new download manager, and support for near field communication.
Looking specifically at the Galaxy Tab tablet, the Gingerbread upgrade applies only to the 7-inch edition. Slated to debut in early June, Samsung’s new 10.1-inch Tab will come with Android 3.0 Honeycomb right out out of the box.
