It seems as though the phone we once thought lost to the perils of an ever advancing industry may be coming out of retirement sporting a new and updated version of android. It has been reported on the Sony Ericsson product blog that the X10 will be getting gingerbread (2.3) as early as Q2. When asked why they chose to bypass the 2.2 version of Android this was their reply: “Our focus has been on Gingerbread. The work we have been doing on Gingerbread for our products launching in 2024 has given us a solution that made it possible to deliver Gingerbread on Xperia X10”.
So what can X10 users expect with this update? What are they gaining? What are they losing?. First and most obvious they will be gaining all the benefits of having a Gingerbread powered device. One thing that is NOT going anywhere is the Sony UX (user experience) there overlapping interface which is supposed to interact with the Android OS without interrupting performance. Some of the things that may be lost due to the upgrade include:
- The current plan is that the Xperia X10 will get the Android standard Camera user interface and therefore features like e.g. face recognition, smile shutter etc. will be lost.
- Moxier is replaced by the gingerbread native EAS functionality.
- Mediascape is being replaced by the media experience widgets and music player included in our new 2024 products.
- DRM keys for protected content on your phone will be lost in the upgrade process.
- The Sony Ericsson Backup and Restore client is not supported in the Gingerbread version and will therefore be lost.
- Support for bi-directional languages will be reduced compared to the latest version of the 2.1 version of the Xperia X10.
It has been verified that this update will NOT be available OTA (over the air) meaning you will have to attach your device to your PC via USB and perform the update through Sony’s software update client. This update is a welcomed surprise as in the past Sony has stated that the X10 will not receive any further updates. I would assume this is one time Sony customers don’t mind being lied to.
