It was obviously on the cards, but today Sony Ericsson has confirmed that there won’t be any OS upgrades beyond the current Android 2.1 for its X-range of Android phones – the X10, X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro (and presumably also the budget Xperia X8).
Which is a bit of a shame. Here’s a rather ill-advised attempt at “fronting it out” by Sony Ericsson’s Twitter account manager:
Is it wrong to expect phones to last forever – or more than 12 months – in the rapidly-changing world of Android? Link via Android Community.
UPDATE:
We’ve just received the below clarification from Sony Ericsson, explaining what it meant in a little more detail and its future plans for the X-Phones. Here it is:
We believe that the current Xperia range on Android 2.1 coupled with Sony Ericsson’s proprietary upgrades and unique hardware delivers a user experience that is on par with, and in many cases better than, a vanilla installation of Android 2.2.
We’re planning another upgrade to bring new features (such as for example multi-touch for Xperia X10) to the current family of Xperia™ smartphones in Q1 2011.
Our priority right now is to keep enhancing the user experience of the existing products through coming updates and to deliver a fantastic range of smartphones in 2011 that are all on the latest possible version of Android – that is a target we are determined to hit.
HTC’s 4.3″ dual-core Android model, powered by Qualcomm’s all-new S4 processor. It’s smaller than the enormous One X, but is it as nice as its bigger brother? (SPOILER: Yes it is).
HTC is very much B-A-C-K at the top of the Android world with this, its quad-core flagship for 2012. Great camera, huge 4.7″ display and Android 4.0 running beautifully well.
Sony returns with an all-new mobile design for 2012, pairing a dual-core processor with a 720p display. It’s a lovely phone, but is it enough to end our Samsung and HTC obsession?
LG’s updated Prada phone comes with an absolutely crazy black & white theme, but is it just for fashionable suit wearers who want to make themselves look a bit more interesting?
Matt S
/ January 6, 2011This is certainly a warning to those thinking about purchasing a SE phone in the future. SE clearly have no interest in keeping people updated, they want to sell you the phone as-is and then that’s it.
Niels C
/ January 6, 2011One year of real support simply doesn’t cut it, and now that they have Gingerbread “in the house” I can’t believe it would be much of a hassle to implement it on the “old” Xperia series.
Get your acts together S/E! We’ve been here before, and we’re tiring.
Sponge Finge
/ January 6, 2011This is one reason I stopped buying SE phones.
That and the way they used to fire hot blades into my face every time I tried to take a call.
Marcus
/ January 7, 2011Not to defend this but which company does update their phones?
At the moment it seems that all no-one is supporting their products for the length of any mobile contract.
MrChaz
/ January 7, 2011None of them really and it’s not all that surprising. It’s a paradigm shift for both them and the mobile networks.
Gary C
/ January 7, 2011*Strokes Android 2.2 HTC Magic*
Davve
/ January 7, 2011The manufacturers have to accept that they are no longer producing the fire and forget type of electronics that the feature phones were. They are producing small computers and consumers will require their (rather expensive) gadgets to live much longer than feature phones. HTC is the only manufacturer that seems to have a clue at the moment. SE is clearly on the other side of the spectrum…
The easy way out would be to release an open source vanilla android version for each phone at the end of the product cycle. The open source comunity would continue to carry well liked phones for an extended period and would love, rather than hate, the manuffacturer for dropping the phone.
Simon
/ January 7, 2011It really sucks but remember a lot of other devices don’t see OS updates. However many of these other devices have the advantage of not being locked down so there are many custom ROMs to give the updates. The X10 suffers from a locked bootloader which makes custom roms bloody difficult to do. Sony could have done a lot more and they chose not to. Want gingerbread? Buy our new phone. Erm, no thanks…