Sony Ericsson denies Ice Cream Sandwich 'confirmation'

Sony Ericsson promises Ice Cream Sandwich for latest phones
Let's get this dessert started

Sony Ericsson has reportedly confirmed it will be upgrading all its latest Xperia smartphones to Android Ice Cream Sandwich when it's released.

A representative of the Japanese-Swedish alliance told SoMobile that it will be bringing the next level of Android to the current crop of Xperia phones, with all the next-gen functionality that entails.

UPDATE: Turns out, this simply isn't true. We've spoken to Sony Ericsson and while it's still all over the idea of keeping its phones up to date, the information from SoMobile isn't correct:

""When it comes to future platforms of the Android OS, we will make them available to consumers in a timely manner, as long as they improve the user experience and are viable from a hardware point of view."

Sony Ericsson has previously told TechRadar it specifically made its Android UI as fluid as possible, so it's easy to 'hook in' another version of the OS underneath its TimeScape interface - which means when the Ice Cream Sandwich update does emerge, the company should be able to relatively easily add it into current handsets.

Floodgates open

So we should definitely see everything from the Xperia Arc through to the newly announced Neo V experiencing the next level of Android, which is supposed to 'unify the factions' of the fragmented Google OS - on both tablets and smartphones.

And just how far back will Ice Cream Sandwich go in terms of compatibility? Will the original X10 actually be updated to the latest version of Google's OS when it lands?

Google's Eric Schmidt has recently spoken out to confirm an October or November Ice Cream Sandwich release date, so while this little episod turned out not to be true we still a deluge of next-gen Android upgrade stories appearing pretty soon.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.