Galaxy S2 what is ice cream sandwich consensus from those who have upgraded ?

[gtm]

Should I upgrade?  The only comments I have found are negative.

[zhenboling]

In my opinion, ICS is much better than GB, despite of some minor problems.

[UnusualSuspect]

The I777 is a lean, mean Gingerbread running machine. My wife has my I777 now, and I've advised her NOT to upgrade.

It's not that I don't think that it's full of ice creamy goodness, but people I know (and people on the internet forums) have remarked that the phone is just a lot smoother on GB than any ICS ROM they've tried.

If I were still using the I777, I'd do the update - but I'm more of a "power user" than my wife. I can usually work through the kind of issues being reported on the forums.

I think if I were to do the upgrade, I'd factory reset the beastie after the upgrade finished and re-install all my apps from scratch. It sounds to me like a lot of the issues being reported might stem from less-than-clean installs.

[bmgoodman]

I was eager to upgrade after my phone developed a problem powering off. Most times, it would hang before it completed powering off. ICS solved the problem (though I'm sure there were other ways I could have corrected it and stayed with 2.3.x).

Overall, for me, it's a bit better than 2.3.6, but not nearly like all the marketing I had read. Touchwiz really makes it look more like 2.3.9 than 4.anything. My battery life is just a bit worse, which I was not expecting.

I'm reconsidering CM9 and for now I'm telling my wife NOT to upgrade.

Basically, I'm still on the fence. Maybe you should just flip a coin.

[Entropy512]

My opinion is, in descending order of quality:

I9100 ICS Touchwizz and AOSP firmwares that have been ported to the I777

Late I9100 Gingerbread firmwares such as XWLA4 that were ported to I777 (I consider XWLA4 to be the pinnacle of I9100 Gingerbread.)

I777 UCKH7 original release (esp. if you root and remove the data-eating AP Mobile widget)

I777 UCKK6 Gingerbread update (horrible power management issues)

I777 UCLE5 ICS update (piles of bugs not present in most I9100 ICS releases, including a dangerous bug that can cause damage to the device that is currently unrecoverable if you perform a factory reset - it's a very low probability of damage, but I've seen a number of reports of it happening even with Samsung's original recovery implementation.)

I777 UCLE5 is a steaming pile of poo

[bclark856]

Before I upgraded from GB to ICS, I had no problems with this phone at all. Now it freezes ALOT.... especially with the gallery, stock of 3rd party. 

If it doesn't get fixed, I'm going to reintall Gingerbread.

[gtm]

Thanks to all for your feedback.  I am going to leave well enough alone and stay with a known good solution.