O2 has officially pulled the plug on the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update for its own branded version of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Ray, Arc and Neo after Sony announced last month that all three would get the ICS update.
Sony put the word out that most of its 2011 XPERIA range of smartphones would be getting the out of data ICS update (taking the handsets from Android 3.2 Gingerbread to 4.0) but now UK network O2 have stated that they will not be bringing the update to their O2 branded versions of the phones.
O2 claims it has tested three versions of the OS update and decided not to approve it, due to increased hardware requirements resulting in “speed and performance” issues.
Sony themselves have had numerous issues trying to implement the Android ICS Operating system with their own Timescape User Interface which has seen the heavy delay on the OS coming to the Sony Ericsson handsets alone, now o2 have just ruled out the update as implementing it with their own O2 software.
On O2’s The Blue website they state the reasons for the update cancellation:
“When a manufacturer releases a new version of Android for their phones, we will usually test this software to make sure it is right for our customers. Often the software passes our testing and sometimes we spot a few small issues that our testing team quickly work to fix”
“Over the past few months we’ve been testing a potential Android 4.0 update for some Sony phones – the Xperia ray, Xperia arc and Xperia neo. Unfortunately the testing didn’t meet our requirements”
“Unfortunately with the Xperia ray, arc and neo our testing found that the software update affected the phone’s speed and performance.”
So all in all O2 have deemed that you will essentially have a poorer phone if you were to update the handset to the ICS update. Whilst its annoying for the customers to not have the latest software for the phones it does seem that the Gingerbread iteration of the Software is the best for the performance of your handset.
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Source: O2