Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 has been a sore spot for many tech enthusiasts. It was originally released with high-end specs at the time, but was handicapped with Android 1.6 at a time when 2.1 was the newest thing. Today, Sony Ericsson surprised everyone by announcing plans to update the X10 to Android Gingerbread in the next few months.
After what seemed like a long time, the Xperia line was finally updated to Android 2.1, and afterward SE said that they believe the Android 2.1 experience on the X10 to be "on par with, and in many cases better than" Android 2.2, which most everyone took to mean as a confirmation that the phone would receive no further Android OS updates.
So then imagine everyone's surprise when an announcement was made on the Sony Ericsson Product Blog today that the Xperia X10 (only the X10, and not any of the variants) will be updated to Android 2.3.3 sometime between late Q2 and early Q3 this year. Once the update is ready, users will be able to download it using the PC-based upgrade clients. It was also made clear in the post that there are no plans for any further updates after the Gingerbread update.
In the post, the author himself admits that they had no plans to upgrade the handset beyond Android 2.1 until a short while ago. The upcoming launch of the Xperia Play, Arc, and Neo seem to have convinced SE that updating the X10 to the latest smartphone version of Android is a good idea, and I have to agree with them.
We heard from Sony Ericsson's Global Head of Marketing early this year that they realize how important software updates are to their users, and that they will be doing more in to future to address that. It seems that they have lived up to that statement. This is very good news for X10 owners who have been complaining about how SE left a former flagship device seemingly unsupported, moving on to other devices.
This upcoming update is currently only confirmed for generic trade versions and not customized operator kits. That means that if your X10 has any carrier branding in or on it, it is not yet known whether Gingerbread is coming your way.
Image from Sony Ericsson
chinmay
good decision by se