It's Official: Xperia X10 will not be supported past 2.1

[#1]

Thanks SE...

http://twitter.com/#!/SonyEricssonUK

Between that and AT&T, I'm highly tempted to just take the phone back and start over with something else.

[Uliwooly]

As I recall the performance from 2.1 eclair to 2.2 froyo was 2 to 5 times better, another useful feature app2SD, or that its a hotspot by default w/o having to root nor install other apps to do the same, embedded Flash, etc etc etc.

"This decision is based on that we believe that with the current hardware platform an overhaul of the underlying core OS wouldn’t drastically improve the user experience.

We believe that the current Xperia range on Android 2.1 coupled with our proprietary upgrades and unique hardware delivers a user experience that is on par with, and in many cases better than, a vanilla installation of Android 2.2."

I still don't understand how, why or what are they referring to when they say "...a user experience that is on par with, and in many cases better than, a vanilla installation of Android 2.2" anyone have any ideas or suggestions on what do they mean by this or what are they referring to?

[#3]

Hello Martha, greetings from Portugal.

I use my x10 mini pro in a very similar way that you do. I do use the Facebook once in a while, I do use my Twitter once in a while. Along with that, I use the device in a more professional way, receiving and sending emails while I'm out, viewing pdf or office documents, etc. I don't use it for games and concerning the camera, I rarely use it.

This being stated, I have to agree that the update for 2.1 is really very good and, for my use of the phone, flash isn´t really a problem.

But I think that Android 2.2 could bring a set of developments that enhaces the good hardware the phone as, and could benefit me (and others that make a similar use of mine) a lot, for example:

- app2sd

- 2x - 5x performance gaining over 2.1

- Improvements in Bluetooth

- Better batery performance (so I hear)

In the optic of produtivity, these improvements would be very welcome, and for me would be enough, regarding the device hardware (currently, I don't know the benefits 2.3 has).

Honestly, this is my first SE, and I really like the device. This is only a contribution to the overall discussion, and I sincerely hope that you guys, without compromising the development of your new products, take a second new look to this issue.

The X10 Mini Pro/android 2.1 it's a very good device. But X10 Mini Pro/android 2.2 would be even better, imho.

Best regards

Paulo

[#4]

With this news of 2.1 being the last update,the constant delay of the 2.1 update over the summer/autumn/winter and multi touch not possible, but kinda is now for q1,the phone not even a year etc Sony has lost a customer in me, the x10 will be my last SE phone. SE and Android sounded so good to me last July in the phone shop!!!

[#5]

Hi Martha

the apps I am looking for that need 2.2

Google Voice Actions for voice dialing and searching which is only on 2.2

Wifi hotspot. I want to be able to use my 3G phone as a wireless hotspot to connect my tablet and laptop through it wirelessly. As far as I know these are only in 2.2

Multi Touch - now you say it's available but a few months ago it was all technically impossible.

I can use voice control on any 2.2 android phone or my wifes iphone 4, why not on my x10?

Multi touch is on every other smartphone, why not an x10?

I've got a 6GB data plan but I need to swap out my SIM to my laptop, why cant I use the android wireless hub available in 2.2?

Maybe these are already there, in which case I'll be a happy user and agree that the 2.1 upgrade is better than a 2.2 vanilla install but if they're not available then the 2.1 is just too far behind.

Also, Q1? Does that mean March 31st? Becuase the Q3 update expected was near December when it got to Canada?

At this stage I'm very tempted to cut my losses and buy a new phone. Which would suck because I really liked some of the stuff you did with the 2.1 update.

Also can we get rid of Timescape, it's terrible and the integrating facebook with contacts seems like a good idea but let's remember, it's a phone. In my contacts the main thing I want to do is call people. So not scroll through facebook updates (often from the wrong person with a similar name) to find a phone number which shows up so small when I tap it I miss and am brought to Facebook?

Again maybe this is fixed already. Mainly I would like the Voice Actions and to share my 3G with my laptop. I'll live without multitouch.

Also if you want to know about what the average user wants, then ask anyone who has an ipad. They all want to share the internet with a phone. And lots of average users have iPads.

Thanks for listening.

Gerry

[#6]

Martha-SEAnswers wrote:
Hi,
Thank you for your well thought-out response (as always!)
A few notes:
1) Both parts of this are correct.
2) Let me see what I can work out with Rikard to re-ignite that. 
3) Can I get a bit personal? Tell me some apps that require 2.2+, I don't say this to be snide, I'm genuinely curious. We did an informal poll on twitter of what people were waiting for most on 2.1 and the biggest response? Angry Birds  Now I understand games are important for many people, but can you understand my reaction to this.. it looked a bit like this:  I certainly don't equate Android=White collar worker, but I didn't expect that response either. If I recall correctly, Roxio released a 1.6 compatible version of AB just weeks after we started rolling out 2.1.
If you feel comfortable, do the same with Flash sites. How many are mobile-optimized? How many would you like to use daily, weekly, monthly? Consider this "Educate Martha" time. I find it hard, after 6 years, to act like a "normal" customer. I use my Xperia X8 (currently) to read links via Twitter and check my Facebook when I'm out. What sites are you using?
4) This was not handled as planned. We are working on this.
5) Think of it this way: Do you think the power-users of this forum, the Blog, etc. are a fair representation of the average user? I don't. I truly think the "average" person is satisfied with this answer.
6) What do other companies do, in your experience? I'm curious to know your understanding of how other companies are handling this. I suspect, even if we were to leave this software open, you would still be considered "out of warranty" if the software you attempted to install to "mod" the phone damaged it in anyway. If you are the type of user that is going to attempt this regardless, I imagine the status of your warranty with our company is not a concern for you.
I'm replying directly to your post BBX, but my comments really are for everyone. I'll work on a Part 2 for this later tonight/tomorrow.

Hi Martha,

Thanks for you response back though I don't know if this represents all of SE the team that allows the release of each android OS to its vital customers that keep SE in business.

You guys must be happy to stay on your current market share whereas other companies like Samsung etc are always looking for ways to keep existing customers happy not being so Blase' which SAMSUNG, APPLE and MOTOROLA  have increased their market presence. Or is it becuase of AT&T and SE have a partnership on the new ARC which there is now a contact in place about existing handsets supplied by SE such as handsets like my handset which is the X10 will no longer be supported in future roll-outs of the Android SE ( whereas the Golden Child  aka the Sony Ericsson ARC will be supported in years to come )

If you can take the time and relay this to the SE management team or the correct area that controls future updates would be greatly appreciated whichever is more appropriate:

http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.3-highlights.html

Overall, to reiterate these dot points as per the above,

• I have noticed that other major handset suppliers such as SAMSUNG allow internet calling such as Skype into their current handsets not future ones that are being developed down the track

• Faster text imput and manipulation is the way to go and word copy and paste selection - a better andoid kepad layout will be better utilised on the X10's screen.
• TheTimscape application is a useless and very power hungy application that is standard with the SE X10 whereas the ARC will not have a version similar to what exists on the X10

Just a few dot points to get the ball rolling to get the SE X10 supplied with regular Android updates.

Thanks for your time

[Uliwooly]

I agree that there are people who like to mod their devices but since Sony Ericsson has been extremely late with the firmware update and closed the doors to further updates the more we need to get access to the bootloader. so some developers could deliver what SE promised and like I said before, the life cycle of a Sony Ericsson product its supposed to be up to two years isn't it true? or I misread it?

[#8]

Dear SE employee.

I thank you for taking time to try and bring some peace to us.

But many ppl feel that SE has lost it's magic touch.

My p910i... i still have it.. with the original battery, running custom FW and still doing it's job every day.

My x10 was suposed to replace that phone... but all it did was replace my pride with sadness.

Please is there a way to speak to someone on the android hardware and software team.

I think i have a few things i need to say.

I feel that SE needs to learn that ppl bought from SE for quality and functionality.

The x10 lacks in both.. as the only good things about it are...

"it's pretty and the cammera somethimes does it's job on some versions of the hardware"

When i got my x10 i was unable to use it since day one due to a hardware bug "un fixable" with the GSM modem.

Neither SE or Vodacom would fix or replace it.

So having paid for my X10 "not a contract deal"

Also i was told that the x10 has full multi touch by vodacom "cuz the BITCH who sold it to me didn't have a clue WTF multitouch was"

So please.. listen to your customers! you cannot fuction without them!

Their feedback means more that the knowlege of some retarded android programmer that has no clue how to write a efficient app for the phone.

Using custom roms we gain a lot of speed. but the hardware is still so buggy and full shit that it makes doing a simple phone call can be a problem.

also i saw the ARC was using a similar 1GHz cpu..

NEWS flash.. some phones are clocking 1.5Ghz and lets not even talk about the tegra "Dual Core CPU & Nvidia GPU Chipset" and not to forget Marvels 3 core beast.

So the ARC is already by comparison "a under classed phone"

Best of luck... if i see after 2 years that sony remembered to put the customer first and that continues over the year..

then i will buy... wait.. then i will mabey buy from SE again.

[#9]

Many, many thanks for taking the time out Martha to reply - you're doing a sterling job of "damage control". :smileygrin:

A2. Rikard's postings have been very useful, and I realise that he's Arc-focussed at the moment. And given the undeserved posted abuse that he's received from the X10 community in the past, I can appreciate that he wants to look to the future devices. But if he could collect togther the various bits of information into a product blog entry, then that might help to gauge the depth of feeling.

A3. As you rightly say, it's the 2.x requirement that most software needs - certainly that was the case for the Ubuntu One client and the Adobe Reader clients. The only software that I've come across (so far) that requires 2.2+ was the xda-developers remote wipe. Yes, I can work around that, but it'd be nice to have that level of security (I won't bore you with the reasons why I want to zap my phone if it gets stolen/lost).

The big ticket item remains Flash/Shockwave - again there's circuitious ways to resolve that one, but having the official client would solve a lot of rejected support calls. Subsequently, I'm guessing that most Flash usage is games related, but in my case I've come across a couple of websites that I'd like to use that have Flash driven navigation (ASUS being the most recent one, and I've run into problems with my ISP's support site too). I find the browser on the X10 actually good enough to use non-mobile optimized sites with little effort - in fact in some cases I've had to switch to Opera to force the remote site to switch to "mobile" view - the UK Meterological Office (weather reports) is one such website. The 2.1 update was highly useful in this respect.

Of course like an idiot I of course neglected to mention the 2.2 "move apps to SD" feature - again I can work around this, but others may not be so lucky.

A5. (Users thinking 2.1=2.2) Hmm, I'd argue part of that perhaps - my experience is that the X10 owners on my network (Three UK) are there because they explicitly chose the X10, rather than were sold it. At the time I was buying mine, the salesperson was doing a pretty good job of trying to dissuade me, preferring a Samsung device. I held out for the (more expensive!) X10! :smileygrin: So yes, X10 owners tend to be tech-savvy from what I've seen.

But for Joe Public/Jane Doe again the lack of Flash is the big item - "can this run Flash?" is a common question. Without it then it's only as good as an iPhone, and gets beaten in this respect by Galaxy S, Desire, etc. I've certainly seen folks comparing the spec cards in the local phone shop and saying that "1.6 is smaller than 2.1, so the 2.1 phone must be better". So I'm guessing that the same is possible for 2.1 v's 2.2 (despite what Sony Ericsson UK may think).

And as an aside, one of the things I like about this forum is that you do get such a wide range of knowledge in the subscribers - everything from folks who'd rooted their phone within 10 minutes of poweron to others who just want to know how to change the background. I don't consider myself a "power user" by any means - I just want a device that does what I want, when I want, and doesn't keep me waiting (and the current X10 scores extremely highly on all three of these metrics!)

A6. (Boot ROM protection). From xda-developers "The bootloader of the x10 is currently not cracked. All original SE roms  are signed with a 1024bit RSA encryption key and the boot loader checks  each time the signature of the rom while booting. Since the key has not  been cracked, loading custom roms is not yet possible. Developers are  working on this though and are quite positive that they can find an  alternative to use custom roms on the x10". The key part is the one I've underlined - note that (for example) neither the Samsung Galaxy S nor HTC Desire HD have this restriction - so providing you're happy to shred the warranty   you can easily (?) use the more modern ROM images available on those devices.

My comment about the legal issues were around circumvention of the protections - in some countries this is illegal. As to the warranty, as you rightly say, if you're the kind of person considering going 3rd party ROM, then you're likely to be unconcerned about warranty. As I understand it, there's mechanisms in place to fall back to the stock ROM's, but permitting/facilitating the 3rd party option would allow further life of this (excellent!) device now that the official support seems to be winding down.

For my own device, if there was camera support then I'd be comfortable to move to a Cyanogen Mod ROM in autumn/winter time - midway between SE 2.1 installation and contract end seems like a good time to go 3rd party. I'm quite happy to lose Mediascape (replaceable via something from Google Marketplace) and Timescape (downright annoying), and it'd also give me a chance to remove some of the unused stuff that's there currently (like Spotify, Moxier and Wisepilot) and the device is far out of warranty, so where's the harm, (especially if there's an easy way to return to stock).

[Gosx10i]

Hi Martha,

In reply to point 5 of your answers, post.

I am the "Average User" and know nothing of twitter etc as I do not use the social networking sites.

I didn't even know about this site until I saw the link on my SE profile home site and came over to see what it was all about.

I think that you might find that the "Average User" is not aware of SE's intent to drop support and development of the X10, as this information is not available to the "average user" in main stream traffic.

However, advertise this fact on the news or newspapers and you might get an even larger group of owners who hold the company with similar disdain.

So, as an "Average user" I was hoping that this handset would have been developed to it;s maximum potential and at least have some feeling of pride with it.  Not be dropped because a replacement handset is being issued.

At least with the older Smart Phones that SE released, these did not tie the customer into a 24 month contract and it was more reasonable to upgrade to the next generation on a 12 monthly basis and not have to worry about your phone being out of warranty if anything was to happen to it.

I do not think this is about what system we are running or what system we are going to get, but rather it is on Principal and the fact that you, SE are or have issued a statement of intent before the handset is even out of warranty!

[#11]

OK.. so 2.3 is in the pipeline for the x10...

So.. How will this solve the "lags and restarts" problem from overheating?

And how will this solve the recharge overheating problem?

"Fire hazzard"