It makes me angry reading that people are still stuck with this headache that Sony has 'mis-sold' to cunsumers around the world.
In a rush attempt to gain market share, Sony - as in the case of the Xperia U - marketed a phone for the middle weight devision & realizing from their market research that the majority of the consumers rate highly that the phone have the latest Operating system i.e. ICS, then that is exactly what they attempted to deliver - however obviously this is where the relationship between the Sony Marketing & strategy crew is clearly disfunctional from that of their Research and development.
The phone may be advertised as a All signing and dancing DUAL CORE 1000mhz, but it acts far from it compared to other branded makes and models of phones which are Dual Core 1000Mhz. (And yet half of the Xperia U users out there dont even realize what they are missing as they dont have anything to compare it to usually.
The phone has its own problems and flaws on Gingerbread which they have still yet to fix, But - if your provider allows the ICS update - then the ICS may fix these initial Gingerbread functionality & realiability quirks, but then ICS brings the disasterous Performance issues along which may the already sub acting DUAL COre 1000mhz spec phone act like it is a 100mhz single core - it really is that ridiculous at times - Hence the Uturn in Sony realizing whatever & howee the Xperia U, it clearly cant handle the ICS requriements. (Which this completely goes against everything they advertised & sold it as i.e. BUY NOW, ITS FUTURE PROOF AS WILL SOON HAVE ICS UPDATE.
SONY messed up big time here, and legally aint gonna admit it for obvious financial loss & consumer loss of confidence reasons. They're support line I contacted are also non the wiser the problem with the phone, and just kept saying, stay tuned as perhaps an udpate will be available OR the best is,.."HAve to tried a reset/reinstall of the phone" - which I did about 5 times a week.
As resorted back to my old HTC Desire C phone (A Single 800mhz) which out performed just mere daily interaction responsiveness of the Xperia U I had. For 7 months I fought an escalation case with my provider in the UK on ground of the manufactorer Sony basically false advertising a non-ICS compatible phone & it clearly struggles to operate as such, so then not fit for purpose.
I am now the happy owner of a Samsung Mini S3 (Yes it may be abit more expensive than the Xperia U - but at least it does what it says it does on the description details and as advertised.
I will never buy another Sony product (they also messed up recently with Sony Playstations, selling flawed consoles to the consumer whom then where ignore when raising problems with the sony support line. They are a large organization whom have lost the plot and are out of touch on how to deal with the people that keep them in business.
Go Samsung - you will not regret it - htere is a reason they are kicking ass in the market at teh moment - as they have done their homework (unlike the fools at sony).
Good luck.
