It appears that whilst Sony has made great steps to ensure that their 2011 line of Xperia handsets will get Ice Cream Sandwich(except you Xperia Play) the news is not so good for getting Jelly Bean on your 2011 model Xperia Handset. John Cooper the UK Product Manager for Sony Mobile, has been answering people via the Sony UK Facebook page and has confirmed 2 phones definitely won’t be getting Jelly Bean, the 2 unfortunate models confirmed so far are the Xperia Arc S and the Xperia Mini Pro. As the Xperia blog points out if the Xperia Arc S cannot get the upgrade and it was one of the highest specced phones from that range then the news does not look good for the rest of the range.
He does go on in the post to specify that they have nothing to announce for the Xperia S which is expected as it’s from their 2012 lineup but hopefully we will see a more positive update on Jelly Bean in the near future from a company that is still announcing and releasing phones running Gingerbread. We’ll be keeping a sharp eye out on the Xperia blog to bring you any further updates as they’re announced, but this is pretty disappointing at this stage.
get a galaxy nexus. the phone is built around the software so it is rock solid. I dont even think i’ve ever had a stall or a force close. not once. and i have jellybean. enuf said
I don’t think it is Sony’s fault, the Android platform is being updated too often for manufacturers to realistically keep their products up to date whilst developing new ones.
the ics update for the xperia pro has caused us constant crashes
The stock version of ICS for the Arc was a pretty poor effort on Sony’s part anyway. Do yourself a favour and root your phone and put on the Arc Knight kernel with jj’s hybrid ICS ROM and you will have a much better experience.
Since the X10, which was SE first Android, their support has been very good. The x10 was slow to get updates, but it ended up getting Gingerbread?
The 2011 range has got ICS. IMHO it’s not the most fluid of experiences. Gingerbread runs far better on the 2011 xperia hardware.
I guess that rules it out for the standard Arc then! Bugger. At least we managed to get ICS.
What the hell, Sony? Your phones are always so lustworthy on the outside, but you just keep falling to deliver where it counts – internals are usually a generation behind, and very poor software support. Things like this make me glad I’ve never bought a Sony phone for myself.