Yesterday HTC gave more information as to why the Desire HD (or HTC Ace) will not be included in the HTC’s round of updates to Ice Cream Sandwich.
The Desire HD was launched in October 2010, and originally had Android 2.2 Froyo, which was later upgraded to 2.3.5 Gingerbread. The HTC blog goes in to a bit more detail about the reason for not upgrading to ICS:
For more background, due to how storage on the HTC Desire HD is partitioned – and the larger size of Android 4.0 – it would require re-partitioning device storage and overwriting user data in order to install this update. While technically advanced users might find this solution acceptable, the majority of customers would not. We also considered ways to reduce the overall size of the software package, but this would impact features and functionality that customers are currently using. Even after installing the update, there were other technical limitations which we felt negatively impacted the user experience.
Which seems like a fair explanation to me, the majority of everyday users would not want to mess around backing up their device to a PC/Mac, to do a full wipe of their phone. It could have resulted in a lot of unhappy customers.
What do you think about Android updates, how long should a device be supported by the manufacterer? Have your say over at our Forum.
Source: HTC Blog
You will also find a list of the HTC devices getting the ICS update on the link above.
So they COULD make a fully functioning ROM available, just not OTA and requiring a full wipe? That wouldn’t affect those “everyday users” and the rest of us would be happy. I still have another 7 months to run on my 24 month contract, and it’d be nice to get the choice.
Hi Simon, It sounds like it is entirely possible. It’s a shame they don’t ‘leak’ a ‘test rom’, that never gets pushed OTA, but advanced users that understand the risk could use to bring their device up to date.
hi Simon, similar to the way the desire got gingerbread, I’d love that!
Not even as “bad” as the Desire/GB issue. They are saying that we could have the FULL ICS + Sense 3.6 ROM, with nothing stripped out. The ONLY caveat being that a device wipe is required to allow re-partioning. I’d be happy with that. As I’m sure would many.
just go to xda and update it
hi sihaz
only prob with XDA is they don’t have a fully working no bugs ICS, where HTC do. all it would take is for HTC to release it through htcdev web site!
Or… They could stop playing silly beggars and just shove stock ICS on without any of the crapps.
HTC would never release a ROM without the Sense UI on it…not going to happen.
So why not do the update, give a very strong warning that all data will be wiped, and then let customers choose what they want to do.
Sounds very Apple like to me. Why let customers make an informed choice when we can decide for them