News - Sony Ericsson won’t be upgrading Android 2.1 phones

[HEXUS]

The mobile phone market doesn’t see any benefit from moving on to 2.2, so it’s not bothering.

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[jimbouk]

Or they could always remove the encryption from the bootloader and let us upgrade our phones ourselves. Take with one hand, take with the other.

Hands up anyone who's bought a SE smartphone recently who will buy another...

[spoon_]

Things like that put me off from buying any Android device, what's the bloody point of you cannot upgrade yourself?

[Nelsaidi]

You can, provided the phone has a large enough developer communities that there are custom roms being made, look at Nexus, Desire, Galaxy S - all of these have countless of different roms you can install all maintained by the community.

Unfortunatley, not all android phones have the luxury of this, take a look at xda-developers.com for more info, hell, some android (and windows mobile) can run not only android, but windows 98 and ubuntu :O

[koocha]

Things like that put me off from buying any Android device, what's the bloody point of you cannot upgrade yourself?

DON'T let Sony Ericsson put you off buying an Android device. They're absolute pants.

I've got a Nexus One, rooted and boot loader unlocked so I can do with it what I want. And I do.

Custom roms ahoy! Currently waiting for CyanogenMod 7!

[BobF64]

Things like that put me off from buying any Android device, what's the bloody point of you cannot upgrade yourself?

Whilst the phones could be upgraded, do they really need to be?

I mean, you wouldnt replace the engine on your car just because you could.

And past phones werent any different, were they?

As long as it works as a phone, and does everything it did when you first bought it, Im not totally convinced they need upgrading.

Its the whole Vista on old PCs drama waiting to happen again.

[[GSV]Trig]

Whilst the phones could be upgraded, do they really need to be?

The whole point of an OS like Android is its openess so to have an open system on a phone thats not open kinda misses the point, unless they are just selling Android phones as its a cheaper option for them to manufacture.

I mean, you wouldnt replace the engine on your car just because you could.

Yes I would.

And past phones werent any different, were they?

No, but past phones didnt have such open systems on..

As long as it works as a phone, and does everything it did when you first bought it, Im not totally convinced they need upgrading.

I havent used 2.1 but 2.2 adds a fair bit compared to say 1.6..

Its the whole Vista on old PCs drama waiting to happen again.

[cheesemp]

I have an X10 and I quite like it but this statement just means I will not buy another SE phone. Its one thing to decide not to support a phone any more (which is a little unfair on a 9 month old phone anyway) but to then put out a marketing comment like this implying they are doing me a favour! SE really have a lot to learn still - You think the issues over the 2.1 upgrade would have made them sit up and listen but apparently not!

[Flibb]

The reason I purchased an Orange San Francisco as my first Android phone (Win Mo up till now) was that at £80 I am more than happy to try custom ROMS, and have no expectation of Orange releasing an upgrade to 2.2. If I had paid £300+ I would really expect the maker to keep the phone up to date for a while, and going from 2.1-2.2 is a worthwhile step (hardware acceleration, install to sd). What is really annoying is that the custom ROM chefs seem to have few problems porting newer versions, why is it such a struggle for SE?

Since buying the SanFran I probably wont fork out for expensive phones or contracts in the future. And there are even rumours that Orange will release an official 2.2 for it, rather amusing that a £80 phone gets the upgrade, while many £300+ ones dont

[BobF64]

The whole point of an OS like Android is its openess so to have an open system on a phone thats not open kinda misses the point, unless they are just selling Android phones as its a cheaper option for them to manufacture.

Dont confuse open system with user choice.

Android is an open system because the manufacturer can use, configure and update it as required, not the phones owner.

Providing OS upgrades isnt required to use a phone, unless it fixes some critical bug.

I havent used 2.1 but 2.2 adds a fair bit compared to say 1.6..

Yes, but as people found out, devices that ran 1.6 didnt really cope at all with 2.1 or 2.2.

Obviously, if youre buying a phone with the express intention of messing around with it yourself, its down to you picking the right one, if you bought a phone to actually be a phone/smart device, then it shouldnt matter as long as you can still get apps on it.

[gjchester]

I have an X10 and I quite like it but this statement just means I will not buy another SE phone. Its one thing to decide not to support a phone any more (which is a little unfair on a 9 month old phone anyway) but to then put out a marketing comment like this implying they are doing me a favour! SE really have a lot to learn still - You think the issues over the 2.1 upgrade would have made them sit up and listen but apparently not!

Nothing new for SE...

I had an Xperia X1 running Windows Mobile 6.1 SE promised an upgrade to 6.5 and then decided they would rather get the X2 out the door, and 6.1 was all X1 owners would officially get.

Your right in that I'll never buy a SE phone again either as they promise upgrades then drop upgrade support as soon as it hits the market. I would not mind as much if they said "tough no OS upgrades thats it" but the "Coming soon, oh sorry can't be bothered", just shows what they think of the end customer, especially as the Xperia was aimed at the early adopter / tech savvy user.

There are always custom ROMs but given I bought the flagship (at the time) phone I'd like to think they were willing to support it as such.

[crossy]

Things like that put me off from buying any Android device, what's the bloody point of you cannot upgrade yourself?

Actually that's a bit harsh - that's like me saying that I'm going to avoid all Apple devices for ever, because of the shoddy treatment I got over the iPod Touch I had. SonyEricsson are one of the worst as far as I can see (although I'm quite content to be told that there ARE worse) for software support/upgradeability of their phones. Other devices - such as the obvious Nexus One - and some of the HTC kit appear to be very tweakable.

Rather than continue to stretch its development resources on updating older phones, who's users have already grown accustomed to using older versions of Android, SE is going to focus on getting it right from now on.

I actually agree with most of the article - apart from this bit. Judging by the furore on the SE support sites, X10 owners most definitely haven't "grown accustomed" to getting the sh*t end of the stick as regards updates - and there was a lot of (false) optimism that the eventual release of the 2.1 update would mean that we'd be on track for the 2.2 one this year.

Yes, I'll be the first to admit that the eventual 2.1 update that snuck out of SE was a pretty good effort - and probably worth the wait. But, IN NO WAY AT ALL is this a "replacement" for a 2.2 update. For example there's no Dalvik speed boost and no tethering in the 2.1 update - so anyone from SE claiming that their 2.1 = 2.2 is being wholly mendacious.

Personally I don't care how nice Arc looks, or how fancy the camera is - without demonstrated support for the current devices it's highly unlikely that I for one will be replacing my current SE X10 with another SE device when my contract comes up for renewal. I will instead be looking at one of the other Android vendors - probably Samsung.

Android OS 2.1 coupled with Sony Ericsson's proprietary upgrades and superior entertainment hardware (8.1 mp camera and HD video recording) delivers a user experience that is on par with, and in many cases better than, a vanilla installation of Android 2.2

And how many Android phones ship with a "vanilla" installation of 2.2? Apart from the Nexus One (I think) I can't actually bring to mind ANY that don't have some manufacturer-added "goodies" layered on top.

All in all ... a very poor showing from SonyEricsson!