Sony Xperia Play Gaming Smartphone Won't Be Getting Android OS 4.0 After All

Bad news for owners of Sony's gaming-oriented smartphone -- the company said today that the Xperia Play won't be getting the upgrade to the latest version of Android that the company promised earlier.

When Sony announced last year?which of its models would be upgraded to Android OS 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), the Xperia Play was on the list. Now, however, the company has released the following statement:

Ice Cream Sandwich demands more from the phone hardware than Gingerbread. Android 4.0 is a more powerful OS and thus, more resource intensive -- applications require more RAM, CPU power, and network bandwidth. From internal testing and feedback from the developer community on the beta ROM software release, we have seen a significant decline in user experience when running high performance games, as they are more demanding on the hardware. As gaming content is so integral to the core Xperia Play proposition, we cannot recommend an upgrade.

Sony is either prepping or has already released Android ICS upgrades for most recent models in its Xperia line. The only one of these to launch in the U.S. was the Xperia Play, however, which debuted last year from AT&T and Verizon.

The beta version of this upgrade for the Play that was released by Sony in the spring was almost an alpha and has significant limitations, including disabling Wi-Fi on the device.

Brighthand did a review of the Xperia Play when it was released by Verizon last summer.

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