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I realize that most people don’t care when or if their Android phone or tablet gets a major OS upgrade. But, I do and have been annoyed by how long it takes vendors to get upgrades out the door. Android 4.x (Ice Cream Sandwich), for example, was released on October 19, 2011 – 6 months ago. The first ICS device, the Galaxy Nexus, was released a month later (Nov. 14, 2011). However, Samsung is only now announcing the list of their devices that will eventually get ICS upgrades. These upgrades aren’t actually available. But, there is the hope that upgrades will be available soon.

While carriers are sometimes the cause of these delays, why is it that Samsung’s WiFi-only tablets have not been upgraded yet? My guess is it is because of the no-value TouchWiz graphical layer Samsung lays over Android’s native interface. If vendors would stop fussing with their ugly and generally useless GUI overlays (with the exception of the screen capture utility Samsung adds with TouchWiz), I bet these upgrades would be available a lot faster.

So vendors, dump TouchWiz, TouchSense, Blur and all those other GUI overlays. They add little or nothing and keep desired new features and bug fixes out of your customers’ grasp.

Six months after its release, Google’s Android 4.x (Ice Cream Sandwich) only accounts for 2.9% of the devices that access the Google Play store. Toss in the popular Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook Color, which do not touch Play at all, and ICS probably accounts for only 1% of all Android devices. And, yet, Time Warner’s anxiously awaited TWC TV update that adds live TV streaming to the Android app only provides that streaming on ICS devices – the 1%. What’s up with that?