Xperia arc, ray and neo updates blocked by O2

O2 announced today that they have blocked the release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for the Sony Xperia arc, Xperia ray and Xperia neo. The move, that was announced today over at the O2 Blog, cites “speed and performance issues” as the reason for O2 not releasing the update.

In their blog post, O2 said…

With the Xperia ray, arc and neo our testing found that the software update affected the phone’s speed and performance. These issues were present on three separate versions of the Android 4.0 software we tested and are caused by the software having more advanced hardware requirements than previous versions, as Sony explain on their site – “Android 4.0’s hardware requirements are more advanced than previous software updates, so your phone’s performance may be affected.

Because the software affects the phone’s performance in this way and because you can’t revert back to an earlier version of Android without having your phone completely restored, we have decided not to approve the update. This means it won’t be available for O2 customers on these phones.

We pride ourselves on putting our customers at the heart of everything we do and will continue to monitor the situation, however at the moment there are no new software versions planned for these phones. This means these phones will remain on Android 2.3 Gingerbread which is a very stable platform.

Although the devices are not going to be updated officially for those of you on O2, they are covered by the FreeXperia project, meaning that CM10 (Android 4.1, Jelly Bean) is available for the arc, neo and ray respectively. Installing CM10 on your device will void your warranty and potentially make it unstable – we here at CoolSmartPhone accept no responsibility for any damage that occurs… you have been warned!

Are you an Xperia arc, ray or neo user on O2? What do you think about this blocked update? Let us know in the comments.

Source – The Blue – O2 Official Blog
Credit – Moomin Head