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Sony Ericsson Xperia Smartphones to Get Android 4.0 ICS Update Starting Mid-April

The Sony Ericsson brand name may be slowly being left behind after Sony bought out the business, but the company isn’t forgetting those faithful customers who purchased older Xperia smartphones.

Sony Ericsson announced back in November of last year that all Xperia models that launched during 2011 would be getting the update to Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich. Back then it didn’t say when the update would launch, but now the long wait is over – things will kick off mid-way through this month.

There were a lot of Xperia smartphones released by Sony Ericsson last year, but understandably Sony can’t update everybody at once. The first phones to get the coveted update are the: Xperia Arc S, Xperia Neo V and Xperia Ray. These will update later on in the month, with the download rolling out over a four to six week period.

Unfortunately we’re hearing that many of the popular Sony Ericsson Xperia models won’t get the update until late May or early June. If you’ve got one of these handsets, you’re going to have to wait a little while longer:

Xperia PLAY, Xperia Arc, Xperia Neo, Xperia Mini, Xperia Mini Pro, Xperia Active and Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman.

Unlike Samsung and HTC, Sony won’t be allowing users to download the firmware update over the air using Wi-Fi. Due to the sheer size of the update file, it’ll be necessary for those wanting to update to plug their phones into a PC or Mac via USB and install the update using Sony’s PC Companion (Windows) or Bridge for Mac software. Your phone should tell you when the update is available, however, so you won’t need to keep plugging it in to your PC in order to check.

The first smartphone to launch under the Sony brand, the Xperia S, won’t be seeing Ice Cream Sandwich until later in the year, with Sony quoted as saying it’ll happen later in the second quarter – so around May-June time.

We would expect SIM-Free phones to be the first to get the updates, as networks will need to carry out testing before launching the software for its customers. However, if the Samsung Galaxy S II and HTC Sensation update schedules are anything to go by, your network might let you update before the SIM-Free users.

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Via: MobileSyrup