HTC and I had exchanged a couple of emails yesterday. They addressed three questions for me. The first and last questions were about the ICS upgrade to the Rezound and my wife's Rhyme.
HTC's answer to those questions makes perfect sense ("sense," no pun intended). I am in my 50's and used to write and develop software a long time ago, and from my experience HTC's answer to me is well reasoned, thus very believable. It also just kind of "fits" or "feels" better than all of the so called "reasons" that every one is speculating about, and guessing about in many forums. HTC's answer just "fits" and "feels" right. Here it is:
I can understand how important keeping your phone up to date can be quite important. I'd be glad to address your questions with you. For your first and third question, HTC does not announce dates for release of software due to the nature of the software development process. At any point in the software development cycle an situation may be encountered that requires anything from some minor additional rework to complete rewrites of the software base. Only after the final acceptance testing has been successfully completed will HTC release software. The normal time period between the final acceptance testing and release of software is about a week and often shorter than that.
You never know what bugs you are going to encounter, or at which point in testing you are going to encounter them. It is highly advisable to avoid committing to a certain date for a software release. Wasn't it Verizon, not HTC that was telling everyone that the Rezound would get ICS "soon", or in Q1 1012?
Also, as you weed out the early bugs, the later ones seem to get more and more difficult to find and squash. Sometimes squashing the final bugs will require the developer to troubleshoot at the machine code level. In other words the dev. has to chase around bugs in the processor's native machine language using an assembler, at best. Sometimes it involves working in pure binary machine code without the convenience of an assembler. No fun, and very slow work. I did that stuff long ago, and it can drive you nuts to work for a whole week to rewrite a routine that executes in a couple of milliseconds.
Thus, I think that HTC has a very good explanation for the delay. But don't give up hope, they WILL surprise us with it, probably sooner than later. It looks like they won't be influenced into rushing the software for anyone. They seem to be focused on getting it out bug free, not quickly, and I applaud their focus on bug free. They already know that lots of people are drooling and impatient over the ICS upgrade to the Rezound, and they know just how bad the backlash will be if they release a buggy upgrade.
Besides, my stock Rezound works flawlessly as is, so I am not particularly waiting for ICS to be released. I basically just poke around and look at these forums because my semi-retirement leaves me bored stiff at times.