Smartphone manufacturers playing nice with the Android development community is one of the greatest pros of the open-source OS. We"ve seen Sony cave in and preview Android 4.0 on its devices, Asus unlocking the Transformer Prime"s bootloader for the development community, and HTC offer similar unlocks for almost all of its devices - and this generous gift from the manufacturers to Android developers is only expected to get better.
Samsung has made the kernel source code for its Galaxy S II Android 4.0 update available for download. This means various system tweaks can now be applied and that the Galaxy S II can now support better quality ROMs; HTC has also followed suit with similar releases of kernels for its Vivid, Sensation, and Sensation XE smartphones.
Kernels allow CPU overclocking and countless other tweaks, so it should be good to see what the developers can muster up and we just very well may see improved Ice-cream sandwich ROMs very soon.