General :: Contact Pic Resolution JB / ICS - Conflict 2 Devices And 1 Google Account

I've got a smartphone running Jelly Bean. As I like the gmail contact photos very much, I was happy that one new feature of Jelly Bean is the fact that the contact photos are synced with Google servers in hi-res (720x720). I spent a good deal of time replacing the awful downsized pictures with new hi-res pictures. They sync in 720px, everything fine, so far.

Where my problem begins: Within the next days I expect the arrival of my new tablet. It's a low budget one (Arnova 10b G3) which runs Ice Cream Sandwich and which maybe won't ever get a Jelly Bean firmware.

I'm in a conflict now: On the one hand, I'd like to use the tablet with my Google account and not create a dummy account or something like that. This would spoil much of the usability of the account. On the other hand, I don't want to destroy my hi-res contact pics because one Google sync under ICS would downsize them forever and I guess they would again sync downsized to my Jelly Bean phone.

Is there maybe a hack that prevents Google from syncing the contact pictures? In this case, I could use the Google account on the ICS tablet just without contact pics. The downsized pics are rubbish anyways if one's display has a proper resolution.

Or, can one prevent Google from syncing the contacts after setting up the account? I know that the contact sync can be unchecked in the settings but as far as I know, that doesn't prevent the initial sync.