Sony Ericsson won't update Xperia X10 to Froyo

The Xperia X10 left weeping by the Android roadside
The Xperia X10 left weeping by the Android roadside

Sony Ericsson confirmed that it won't be updating the Xperia X10 to Froyo (2.2) despite bringing Android 2.3 to the newly announced Xperia Arc.

Nathan Vautier, UK MD for the UK and Ireland for Sony Ericsson, said that while the brand had managed to 'uncouple' the Timescape UI from the Android OS (the reason for the updates taking so long on the X10) on the Arc, the same trick couldn't be performed on the Xperia X10.

"We're not taking the Xperia X10 further forward [in terms of upgrading to a new version of Android]," said Vautier at a briefing with TechRadar.

UPDATE: Sony Ericsson has since tweeted from its UK account to say, "We believe the features included in the Android 2.1 phone are on par with, and in many cases better than, a vanilla installation of 2.2."

Multi-touch inbound

"However, we will be bringing smaller updates, such as bringing multi-touch to the phone in Q1," Vautier continued.

"We are balancing what consumers want with what it's possible to do from a hardware point of view, but [the Android 2.1 upgrade] was the last OS upgrade for the X10."

The move is likely to irk consumers that were forced to wait a long time to get core functionality and bug fixes for the X10, but at least things like multi-touch, sorely missed from the recent update, are still on their way.

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.