The Android community has had news just flooding out of it lately. Ice Cream Sandwich, one of the biggest updates yet, is due to be released soon. Unfortunately for users of the Nexus One, they won’t be getting an official release of Ice Cream Sandwich. The news comes from Google’s Hugo Barra who told this to The Telegraph yesterday.

This can’t come as to much as a surprise to anyone because it is a fact that the Nexus One is getting closer to becoming out of date (hardware wise). This doesn’t mean that there won’t be unofficial ports, however, and I am almost 100% positive someone over at XDA will have a full ROM for it once the source code is released.

Those of you who have phones that will get Ice Cream Sandwich might be wondering if you can still use the hardware buttons on your phone. The simple answer is yes. A Google spokesperson speaking to Gizmodo said the following:

“ICS does have onscreen buttons but not always. If there’s a device with hardware buttons the onscreen buttons won’t be there, and the hardware buttons will act and function as you’d expect them to…. back and home will function as you’d expect, the search button will query the search bar (as you’d expect), and the menu button will query the menu overflow in the action bar.”

Now all that I am wondering is if Android OEM’s will continue to to build phones with hardware buttons into the design of the phone. I personally like hardware buttons much more than software buttons, but that’s just my opinion.

[Via AndroidCentral]