The Notion Ink Adam was launched just about a year ago, and while it didn’t quite live up to the hype, the company is working on getting the one year old unit up and running with the latest version of Android, 4.0 AKA Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). Notion Ink has been posting regular updates to their blog about progress in porting ICS to the Adam tablet. Their latest update included a video which shows the Adam quite easily navigating through ICS:

If you’ve got an Adam and the stomach for installing pre-alpha software, see here for more details about ICS on the Notion Ink Adam.

So far, Notion Ink says they’ve got accelerated graphics, GPS, Wi-Fi, accelerometer, SD Card and ADB working, while the camera, sound, 3G, bluetooth, remaining sensors, and a sleep bug remain to be fixed.

This progress is surely a slap in the face of Samsung who have recently announced that the original Galaxy S phones and original Galaxy Tab will not receive upgrades to Android 4.0 / ICS. The reason for this, according to Samsung, is that the TouchWiz interface, applied by the company to all of their devices (less the Nexus S), takes up too much memory that an ICS upgrade would not be feasible for these devices. Instead of ICS, Samsung is apparently considering offering a ‘value-pack’ wherein the company would update these forgotten devices and shoe-horn in some of the ICS features, without actually upgrading to ICS itself.

The obvious outrage here is that, if TouchWiz is really the only thing holding them back from updating to ICS, Samsung should offer a vanilla update to ICS if the customer chooses.

Notion Ink is working on that very thing right now. The tablet originally launched with a completely skinned (far more than TouchWiz) version of Android 2.2, but the company will apparently still be offering an ICS upgrade to their customers, even if it means they have to let go of their proprietary interface.

Samsung obviously believes that TouchWiz is important to their customers and that’s why they won’t simply cast it aside and offer a vanilla ICS install. For some customers this may be true. For me, and most of the people reading this site, I’d say that they’d be willing to drop TouchWiz to get the latest performance, feature, and security updates out of ICS, and I think it’s Samsung’s duty to offer them at least that, especially when a company as tiny as Notion Ink is managing to do so.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 Plus has taken us on a serious roller coaster ride. A permutation of the device was announced almost a full year ago at CES 2011. This improved 4G-equipped Galaxy Tab 7 doesn’t seem like it will ever make it to market, but from its ashes rose the device that we now know as the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus. Instead of a small bump in processor speed, an improved camera, and 4G LTE, Samsung ended up slapping in a dual-core CPU, Honeycomb 3.2 with Touch-Wiz, Bluetooth 3.0, and an IR blaster.

The Galaxy Tab 7 Plus starts at $399 for 16GB of storage, and naturally jumps to $499 for a 32GB version. You can actually buy the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus as of today from Amazon. Samsung has an official product page for the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus, but it doesn’t seem to have the device for direct sale just yet. It seems that Samsung is positioning the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus as an economy version of the anticipated Galaxy Tab 7.7.

Whatever the case, there are a lot of happy original Galaxy Tab 7 owners that I know will be happy to trade up to the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus for the Honeycomb and processor improvements. As a bonus, the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus is only one of two Android tablets on the market that include an IR blaster which allows the tablet to be used as a smart remote. This also isn’t just new components stuffed into an old box. The Galaxy Tab 7 Plus has a redesigned chassis that’s thinner and more curvy than the original.

CNET has a detailed review of the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus that’s well worth a read. I’ll give you their synopsis, but please, go visit their full review if you’re interested in the Tab 7 Plus:

The good: The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has a sleek design, a high-quality screen, and well-integrated smart remote-control functionality through the Peel app.

The bad: Peel [the remote app] has limited usefulness if you don’t have cable or satellite, and the tablet’s screen brightness is comparatively low.

The bottom line: The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is pretty and sleek, with well-implemented remote-control functionality, making it the best 7-inch Honeycomb tablet yet.

Yes, that’s right, they’re calling it the best 7″ Honeycomb tablet yet. That statement may change once the Galaxy Tab 7.7 hits the market, but for the time being, it sounds like they were quite impressed. Still, there is concern with Honeycomb — the reviewer experienced “freezing, crashing, and hanging frequently in multiple apps”. Unfortunately, this seems to be the state of Honeycomb at the moment; this isn’t an isolated incident.