O2: no Ice Cream Sandwich for some Sony Xperia owners

Crapware

It'll be the combination of O2 and Sony's crapware that tips the balance, then. Reports are that although ICS likes a gig, it will run perfectly happily in half that in its purest form.

Sony's boasting about the 2011 Xperias getting ICS has always annoyed me; in the UK, no handset has gotten it officially yet to my knowledge. To make matters worse, even network-unlocked/unbranded handsets like my wife's Ray haven't gotten an official update either, supposedly because Sony want to make sure it "works on all networks" so was waiting for all the UK networks to sign off the update before rolling out the OTA.

Not sure what will happen now that O2 have declined it.

On one hand I'm annoyed at O2 for not giving their customers the option of upgrading, but on the other hand I had heard that the official ICS update was bloated and slow as described. Personally I was going to rely on the inbuilt ICS functionality of disabling most of Sony's bloatware to free up RAM, but it looks like CyanogenMod will now be the only way forward which is a shame

I don't blame O2, Sony borked the ICS update

This might not be a popular view - but I can see O2's point. The ICS update *is* laggy, some apps are much slower (the dialler for example), video recording performance is shockingly bad and some games don't even run let alone perform like they did on GB. So if you update to ICS and aren't happy then who's going to take the flak? Who are you going to complain to? O2 of course. And because you can't officially downgrade to GB then O2 just couldn't take the risk. Why should O2 have to take the blame - and potentially lose customers - because Sony borked the ICS update? Remember that most people with these phones aren't techies and won't know about things like FlashTool, XDA, etc.

I'm an arc S owner and a fan of Xperia devices in general but Sony messed this up. The latest f/w (587) is a *little* better but it still doesn't match GB in terms of performance. When ICS was first released for the arc the official Sony support forum was stuffed full of people complaining so it's no wonder O2 decided against this sort of grief.

It's all O2

I have had several times got a Sony/Sony Ericsson/Ericsson with O2's version, and also other network providers, and as soon as you get rid of this, the phone works fine, may be a tweak or two, uninstall some items from the generic uk firmware for the phone.

I have also found that some times, if there is a update, just go to update the phone if you know a new version of firmware is out, as it appears that even if you have not had the notifiy me that there is a update, it never gets acknowledge on the phone, almost as if something has blocked this???

For a example, had a X10i, no notifications, but going to XDA-Developers and also SE web site (At the time) saying that there is a update, used the update service, went through the first few steps of checking with the servers for new versions, and suprise there is a update, even though no notification from the over air notification and the normal desktop PC Companion.

Also helps to have unlocked rootable phone, which is a problem I am having with my Xperia S, teach me to get the phone from O2.. Will resolve this one way or another