Transformer Prime Gets 4.0.3 (ICS) Update

A couple of days earlier than originally expected, ASUS pushed out an update to its Transformer Prime bringing the tablet up to Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich). I brought my Prime with me to Vegas just to be ready for when this update went live. I installed the update last night and have played with the platform a bit since then. Tegra 3 definitely does a better job of handling the ICS UI compared to OMAP 4 in the Galaxy Nexus (more on this in our review tomorrow). In particular, bringing up the task switcher on the Prime is much smoother than it is on the Galaxy Nexus.

ASUS kept the quick settings menu in the lower right as well as the CPU governor settings we loved from our original review.

JavaScript performance actually appears to have taken a step back compared to Honeycomb on the Prime. I'm no longer able to get < 1700ms scores with ICS installed (even in the Normal power profile, SunSpider 0.9.1 is up at 2253ms now). I'll be digging into browser performance over the coming days to see if I can find out what changed between Honeycomb and ICS on the Prime. 

I'm very pleased to see such a quick turnaround on the TF Prime ICS port. If we can get similar progress on Tegra 2 based tablets I'll be very happy.