HTC Desire HD Ice Cream Sandwich update cancelled

Another one bites the dust: the HTC Desire HD will not be updated to Ice Cream Sandwich, let alone Jelly Bean.

According to Canuck canetwork Telus Canada, the Desire HD's Ice Cream upgrade has been cancelled "due to poor device performance during testing." That leaves the phone stuck on the venerable Gingerbread and unable to update to the latest version of Android software.

Each new version of Android is named alphabetically after a tasty treat. Version 2.3 Gingerbread made its debut in late 2010 and version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich came along a year later. It's still struggling to make it to many phones though, leaving the vast majority of Android phones and tablets stuck with Gingerbread -- even as the latest update, Jelly Bean, arrives on the Google Nexus 7.

Sure, the single-core Desire HD is two years old, so we can't expect it to still be right at the cutting edge. But this is the phone that we described as the "ultimate smart phone" when we reviewed it. How can such a top bit of kit go out of date so fast?

Ice Cream Sandwich has proved tricky for many phones. Manufacturers have claimed that modern phones are so complex it's hard to organise an update -- but then we have also seen it running on the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1.

As time passed and Ice Cream Sandwich updates were nowhere in sight, Motorola and Sony both resorted to claiming the new software isn't even that good anyway, and you're better off with Gingerbread. I've asked HTC for a comment on the Desire HD, but haven't heard anything yet.

For a bit of nostalgia, let's flash back to the way we were in 2010. Check out our video of the Desire HD from the days of Matt Cardle, trapped miners, and vuvuzelas: