In 2010, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 was the flagship smartphone from Sony Ericsson. Upon its release to the wild, the device that was designed to lead the then ailing company from the “dumbphone” to the smartphone revolution was already out of date, running Android 1.6 while many competitors were already running newer builds. Throughout the coming months, Sony Ericsson would continue an internal transition to the new business model and phone offerings and at time give hopes to X10 owners with small updates. Eventually, Sony would announce that the Xperia X10 would never see the light beyond Android 2.1 which would be release in late December of 2010. Then, something happened internally at Sony and they began to announce new and exciting models with the latest Android OS already on them. As the company escelated their support for Android, they did so while keeping owners of previous models like the X10 in mind. Sony would soon announce that Android 2.3 Gingerbread would be coming to the Xperia X10 in August of 2011.
Now, Sony Ericsson has announced reconfirmed that. Though some sites have been reporting that Android 2.3 is now out for the Xperia X10, it’s actually not quite true yet, but the update is right around the corner. Mattias Holm, who is the head of product PR from SE went to say:
The launch is imminent and timing according to plan but we just need some more days before we can push the button.
So although it might be a tad disappointing to find out that the update is not coming out today, we do have to keep in mind that Sony’s original target date was sometime in August and we are still a few days away from that. Once the update is live, users need to simply need to plug your Xperia X10 to your PC (not Mac) via a USB cable and download Sony’s PC software management which will then help you with the rest of the process. Sony Ericsson is also working on a OTA (over the air) update though no timetable has been given to that. Once Android 2.3 Gingerbread is released for Xperia X10 owners, you can expect to find the following updates:
- Facebook inside Xperia – a series of unique integrations of Facebook into your multimedia apps, phonebook and calendar
- The possibility of using your phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot (carrier specific)
- Music player with equalizer
- USB tethering – Share your 3G data connection via USB connector
- Photo widget – one click access to your photo gallery app
- App tray sorting – arrange your apps in the order you want them