Sony gives an update on the Jelly Bean release schedule
As promised Sony gave more details on the Jelly Bean released schedule plus which phones wont be getting the update and why.
The first phones to get the Jelly Bean update are Xperia T, TX and V. The roll out will start in February and should be completed by the end of March.
The next trio to get the Jelly Bean treatment is the Xperia P, J and go. Sony will start seeding the updates for those at the end of March.
The last four phones to get Android Jelly Bean are Xperia S, SL, ion and acro S. The rollout for them will begin a few weeks after the second batch of phones get the Jelly Bean treatment, presumably sometime in late April.
This means Xperia arc S, U, sola, miro and tipo are out of the loop and will be stuck on ICS forever, at least as far as official updates are concerned. Sony already responded to those angered by the news.
Here is the quote about the Xperia U, sola, miro and tipo:
"The quality of Xperia's software experience is dependent on a number of factors including: screen resolution, hardware platform and RAM. In the case of Xperia go, this combination came together in a way that meant the user experience running JB was not adversely affected.
Unfortunately, in the case of Xperia tipo, Xperia miro, Xperia U and Xperia sola this wasnt the case so we made the decision to keep them on Ice Cream Sandwich."
And this one is about the arc S:
"Xperia Arc S is part of our 2011 portfolio, which wont be upgraded beyond ICS. The reason being user experience is at the heart of our product development and support; after thorough evaluation, we concluded that the user experience for our 2011 Xperia smartphones will be superior if they remain on Ice Cream Sandwich versus being upgraded to Jelly Bean."
In case you are wondering how is that the low-end Xperia J is getting the Jelly Bean update, while the dual-core U and sola aren't - despite Sony didn't make any statement, we guess the GPU is the one to blame.
All three phones have 512MB of RAM, but the Adreno 200 GPU on the Xperia J uses far less RAM than the Mali-400 inside the Xperia U and sola. We also know that Project Butter needs more GPU power than what the ICS UI. And the insufficient RAM due to GPU usage is probably the reason why these phones won't be getting to taste Jelly Bean.