Almost a week ago we reported that AT&T owners of the Samsung Galaxy Note were still waiting for the Android 4.0 ICS update although ICS was available for the international variant of the phone. We now have news that the ICS update for the AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note begins today, July 10, and you will need to access it through Kies software on your desktop.

Plenty of Galaxy Note users on AT&T have been waiting eagerly for the ICS update as shown in comments to our previous article where we discussed that it still hadn’t arrived for AT&T but also told how there had been some problems with the update in France. At that time we had heard that the ICS update would be coming to the Galaxy Note on Rogers on July 21 and hoped that meant it would also soon be coming to AT&T. Thankfully it looks as though it has arrived sooner rather than later.

News that the ICS 4.0.4 update for the AT&T Galaxy Note starts from today came to us from Android Community who also tell how this is not an OTA update but accessible through Kies. They have given a comprehensive hands-on look at the changes that will come to the Galaxy Note with ICS and also Samsung’s Premium Suite and there are many improvements and enhancements that Note users will notice. The update will enable the NFC and Android Beam functions to be activated and users will be able to push contacts, browser Web pages and Google Maps addresses directly to and from their devices. Also a long press on the Home Button will activate Recent Apps.

Other changes are that Face Unlock has been activated and Data Usage monitoring is now upgraded. S-Note upgrades include new Productivity Tools for working with the S-Note app. Those are Formula Match, Shape Match, Handwriting-to-text and Knowledge Search and you can read more about each of these features at the Android Community link above along with many of the other changes. We’ve also embedded a Slash Gear video below this story that shows the Premium Suite software upgrade on the Galaxy Note.

For those of you interested in benchmarks, some results from the new build are also shown on the Android Community report linked to above. The benchmarks show that in instances where power has fallen it has not been by much at all, neither is there any significant increase in power. If you’re hoping to update to ICS remember to back up your data first and to fully charge your battery before you start.

We know that many AT&T owners of the Galaxy Note will be very pleased at the news that the ICS update is starting from today. Therefore we’d really like to hear from readers about whether you have accessed the update process or not and if so, whether everything has gone smoothly with Kies? Let us have your comments.