At the beginning of the year, Sony Ericsson decided to be party pooper for Xperia X10 owners and announced that it will not support
core OS update for the handset beyond Éclair. However, the company has finally bowed to consumer demand and has decided to update the phone OS to Gingerbread version. We can hear the collective sigh of relief!
The update is likely to be available in the second or third quarter of the year. However, Sony Ericsson is still keeping Xperia X10 mini and mini pro off limits. Although, SE did not provide any reason for changing its stance, but we are sure that xda-developers' hack played a big part.
Despite, SE's reluctance to update its phone, XDA-Developers chose to take Xperia Arc ROM and ported it to X10. The hacking worked fairly well for most of the functions such as data, Bluetooth, network and Timescape. We do not have any official stat on the number of people who chose to carry out this hack, but the release of official version is certainly a welcome step.
However, the update is going to impose some limitations on X10 handsets. It will considerably reduce the support for bi-directional and will also nix some camera related features such as smile shutter and face recognition. The upgrade will also erase DRM keys for the protected content on your handset. You will also lose Sony Ericsson Backup and Restore client, as Gingerbread does not support this feature. After going through this list, it really seems like a tough call to decide whether to update the OS or not. Anyways, SE has also stressed that this update is REALLY the last update Xperia X10 would be getting, that is until the company changes its mind again.