Hey HTC Vivid Owners, Go Download Your Ice Cream Sandwich Update

Despite launching last October, the Ice Cream Sandwich club is still a pretty exclusive one, and even moreso in the United States. Let’s see, there’s the Galaxy Nexus… and, yeah, that’s really it.

Surprisingly though, while HTC mentioned earlier this week that the Vivid would be among the devices to get the Ice Cream Sandwich update, the new software is already available to anyone who knows how to push the right buttons. Literally.

AT&T has said they haven’t officially begun to push it out to the masses, but Vivid owners who dial *#*#682#*#* can force their device to download the update. Once the file has been downloaded and installed (a process which The Verge reports took a little longer than usual), users are left with a Roboto-sporting, Sense 3.6-toting build of Android 4.0 for them to fiddle with.

While it’s not quite as impressive as the Sense 4.0 UI the Taiwanese company showed off at this year’s Mobile World Congress, Sense 3.6 certainly doesn’t seem to be a slouch. Engadget has an in-depth look at what Sense 3.6 brings to the table, if you’re interested in the nitty gritty, and The Verge’s Chris Ziegler has a quick hands-on video to show you how the whole package works on the Vivid itself.

As a brief aside, I’m really enjoying the fact that the HTC phone that people piled on for being as ho-hum as they come (LTE radio notwithstanding) is the first in the country to receive an official Ice Cream Sandwich update. Let’s also not forget that this is the phone that nearly had to be renamed thanks to the litigious inclinations of a porn company, so I like to think of the update as a little gift to the Vivid for being such a little trooper.