Whatever’s happening over at Sony Ericsson at the moment is anyone’s guess but we are starting to like what is coming out of the company as of late.
You may remember when Sony Ericsson announced its latest line of Xperia Android smartphones that it would no longer fully support the upgrade of its existing X10 range, only committing to introducing pinch-to-zoom and not a full firmware update.
Today, things have changed. Instead of leaving its X10 handsets on Android 2.1, Sony Ericsson has just announced it will upgrade the Xperia X10 to Gingerbread, deciding to confirm this after it “was able to deliver a good user experience” with the latest Google firmware.
This is one catch, only unlocked handsets will definitely receive it, with carrier updates coming on a case by case basis.
Posting to the Sony Ericsson blog, Rikard Skogberg explained why the company had suddenly reversed its decision:
Why are you doing this upgrade?
We have listened to our consumers. In addition, the development of the software for our new 2011 range of Xperia phones gave us a solution that made it possible to deliver Gingerbread on XperiaTM X10.
When will the upgrade be available for me?
The roll-out is planned to start end Q2/early Q3 this year. Today, XperiaTM X10 is available in the market both in generic trade version and in versions customized for operators. Due to the resources available in this special project, we will focus on delivering trade versions of the software. Regarding possible customized operators kit we will have to get back with more information on this at a later stage. But we want to be very clear already at this stage on the fact that some of you may not get this upgrade.
With the new update, some features will be lost. The Xperia X10 will lose face recognition and smile shutter, as well as Mediascape, DRM keys, and the Sony Ericsson Backup and Restore client will not be supported.
The update will be delivered via the Sony Ericsson PC clients and will not be over the air, downgrading is also not supported. The company has said that no other older Xperia models will receive the upgrade and that Gingerbread will be the last upgrade the X10 receives.
Incredible. With Sony Ericsson launching new Android handsets over the next month, we certainly didn’t expect this news. Well played.
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