Sony to roll-out ICS update next week, Xperia PLAY gets the boot

We have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Sony plans to start rolling out ICS updates for their older line of Xperia phones, sometime next week. These phones include the Xperia Arc, Xperia neo and neo V, Xperia mini and mini Pro, Xperia Pro, Xperia Active, Xperia Ray and finally Live with Walkman. Now for the bad news. The Xperia PLAY has been mysteriously kicked off from the ICS update list at the last moment. The reason behind this decision, according to Sony, is that the PLAY showed a lot of stability issues on ICS, especially with regards to gaming.

Here’s the rest of the statement from Sony, “This decision was also verified when we received similar feedback from the developer community; both experienced developers and advanced users, along with game content providers following our 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. 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.”

Update's on its way

The rest of the phones should be getting the update sometime next week, but like all Android updates, this will be done phase wise, so it’s difficult to say if we’ll be among the first ones to receive it. The update would most likely be distributed OTA or via the PC Suite program. Coming to their latest line-up of Xperia phones - the Xperia S, Sola, P and U - word has it that they will be getting the update towards the end of June, which is a big bummer. The update will start with the Xperia S, since it was the first one to launch, followed by the P and U, sometime in the third quarter. We still don’t understand why there’s such a long delay in rolling out ICS. If HTC could ship their new phones with ICS then what’s stopping Sony from doing the same?