Sony has decided to bail out on upgrading the Xperia Play to Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich," stating performance issues.
ZoomAh bummer. For a long while, Sony has stated that all Xperia handsets released in 2011 would eventually get the Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" treatment sometime this year. In fact, the updates are supposedly rolling out starting this month. ... but not for Sony's first PlayStation-certified smartphone, the Xperia Play. As of Friday, the gaming phone will never reach 4.0 status.
"After extensive in house testing with our developer teams and working with our partners, we have concluded that a consistent and stable experience, particularly with gaming, cannot be guaranteed for this smartphone on Ice Cream Sandwich – therefore, we will not make the Android 4.0 upgrade available for Xperia Play," Sony stated on the Sony Mobile blog.
Sony said the decision was verified when the company received similar feedback from the developer community. This input included both experienced developers and advanced users, along with game content providers following the release of Sony's ICS beta ROM for unlocked Xperia Play smartphones.
"Our priority has and always will be, to provide the best possible user experience on Xperia smartphones," Sony said. "In this instance the ICS upgrade would have compromised stability, where we look to ensure a quality gaming experience with games optimized and developed for Xperia Play."
As for other Xperia smartphones, Sony said the first Xperia NXT device to be upgraded will be Xperia S, starting from the end of June. The Xperia P will follow shortly thereafter, and the Xperia U will see the upgrade sometime in Q3 2012.
The remaining 2011 Xperia smartphnes -- Xperia arc, Xperia neo, Xperia mini, Xperia mini pro, Xperia pro, Xperia active and Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman -- will start to receive their updates starting from next week.
"This software upgrade will be Android version 4.0.4 and the good news is that this latest version will also be made available for Xperia arc S, Xperia ray and Xperia neo V users, who received Android 4.0.3 the first time around," Sony said.
Also it looks like the android system itself wont download a file if it doesnt have an app to open it or a file format it knows, kind of odd and annoying but still got it working.
