Sony Ericsson announces Ice Cream Sandwich software upgrade for handsets

As soon as Ice Cream Sandwich was released Sony Ericsson announced upgrade for its handsets. The bad news is that Sony Ericsson says the process of upgrading to Ice Cream Sandwich is quite tedious.  

The upgrading process involves two steps - 'Bring Up phase' and 'Certification and Approval phase'. In the Bring Up phase engineers try to upgrade the device by making source code compatible with the device. Now this has to be done on different devices differently. As even though Sony Ericsson Xperia range is one but it has several different models that vary in specifications. This stage takes a lot of time. 

But what takes even more time is the second stage of the process ‘Certification and Approval’. In this stage all the devices have to be tested by the authorities in-house. Sometimes this testing also involves third party testing where the process takes even longer. For a product that is launched globally needs certification from up to 80 countries and worse is at times manufacturers have to apply individually in some countries.

Ice Cream Sandwich has been optimized for Texas instruments, Sony Ericsson first needs to replace some parts or even throw some. This is required so that handsets can be made equivalent to Qualcomm 8255 chipset. This is the same chipset that was used in Xperia 2011 line. But the problem doesn’t resolve by only changing the chipset. The engineers have to work on making it firstly compatible with phone’s peripherals like camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluettoth etc.

It is only after all these modifications and tests take place, a manufacturer is allowed to launch upgrades of the software on the handsets. But for Android users who have already waited for long upgrade is necessary as soon as possible.