according to the article. yes. it says that google promises that any device that already has gingerbread can be able to handle the next update. i cannot wait for this to happen. these next set of roms that will be coming out at the end of the year should be truly amazing.
The problem will arise if, and I reiterate
if, htc decides to skin Ice Cream Sandwish with Sense 3.0.
As you may know, htc have stated that the Evo 4G will never see an official OTA that includes Sense 3.0 because they say the phone hardware isn't up to the task - which isn't true because there are custom ROMs out now that use Sense 3.0 and my Evo handles them perfectly. The only drawback I've seen is that the Sense 3.0 ROMs are huge compared to those that use Sense 1.0.
If I remember correctly, Google have said that, starting with Honeycomb, phone manufacturers are no longer allowed to skin Android. The best part about this is we'll see upgrades sooner because we won't have to wait for the manufacturers to skin the OTA's before pushing them to our phones.
Some of you may remember what Motorola did to the Cliq XT owners. Moto kept promising upgrades.. and kept promising. Finally Motorola came back and said "sorry, skinning the upgrade (motoblur) is more trouble than it's worth so the Cliq XT will not see any more upgrades." Imagine that, no more upgrades just because the manufacturer has trouble applying their own skins.
Sadly, Sprint have said that the Evo 4G goes EOL in October. That's sad because if htc doesn't skin Ice Cream Sandwich there would be a good chance of us getting that OTA upgrade.
Thank goodness for the ROM dev community, eh?