In a major "Surprise!" moment, Huawei has officially released what looks to be a demo build of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) for the Honor (model number U8860). Details are incredibly light at the moment, since all we're really going on here is a product support page that's been Google Translated from Chinese to English and contains next to no information:

According to the poster at XDA, the posted update is actually just a "demo" (beta?) and not the final version. A Huawai Senior VP (Yu Chengdong) has been sharing pictures and some details via Chinese social media service Weibo (auto-translate is including such gems as, "I use black Honor, equipped with the latest 4.0 version of the operating system Andrews. To sleep, disturbing for people.")

Update: Our tipster downloaded the zip; there's a PDF inside with instructions on how to install the ICS update, as well as how to roll back to Gingerbread. It also reiterates that this is a demo ICS build and was released so Honor users can get a feel for the changes and new features in ICS.

Pretty cool to see a company known for budget products being the first out the gate with a public ICS update, even if it is beta. Must be part of their plan to wend their way into the upper-end of the market.

[Source: Huawai via XDA-Developers. Thanks for the tip, Yuankai!]