Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 to get Android 2.3 Gingerbread

After believing that the Sony Ericsson X10 had been put away in terms of getting no more Android updates, we now hear, or surprisingly hear I should say, that the device will soon be getting Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Before we continue, note that this it the X10 only and not the other variations of the X10.

Back to the Android 2.3 update for the X10, we were told months ago that there would be no more updates beyond Eclair for this series of smartphones, but for various reasons, all covered here, we hear that SE has changed its mind and will be pushing the new update out either late Q2 or early Q3 this year.

Another thing we’d like to point out is that SE has also stated that not all X10 devices will get this update as a lot of it depends on carriers. What the development team is working on is getting the trade versions of the software out there.

A list of what might appear in the update can be found here:

The current plan is that the XperiaTM X10 will get the Android standard Camera user interface and therefore features like e.g. face recognition, smile shutter etc will be lost.
Moxier is replaced by the gingerbread native EAS functionality.
Mediascape is being replaced by the media experience widgets and music player included in our new 2011 products.
DRM keys for protected content on your phone will be lost in the upgrade process.
The Sony Ericsson Backup and Restore client is not supported in the Gingerbread version and will therefore be lost.
Support for bi-directional languages will be reduced compared to the latest version of the 2.1 version of the XperiaTM X10.

For those wondering why Android 2.2 was bypassed:

Our focus has been on Gingerbread. The work we have been doing on Gingerbread for our products launching in 2011 has given us a solution that made it possible to deliver Gingerbread on XperiaTM X10.

Sony does comment that 2.3 (or 2.3.3 to be exact), will be the last update they do for the X10. Of course, they have said this before, but this time we can believe it a little more due to the new hardware features that we are seeing on new devices. As soon as we get a more firm release date, we’ll let you know.