O2 kills Ice Cream Sandwich for Sony Xperia Ray, Arc, Neo

O2 customers with a Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray, Xperia Arc or Xperia Neo aren't getting Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Although Sony has sent the update winging its way to unlocked phones, O2 isn't happy with the update and has decided Ray, Arc and Neo owners will have to do without.

Android updates are released by Google to the manufacturers of the phones, like Sony, who test the software with each phone. If they're happy, the update goes straight to customers with unlocked phones, and to the phone networks for them to test with their locked phones.

"Often the software passes our testing," O2 explains, but "sometimes we spot a few small issues that our testing team quickly work to fix.

"Unfortunately with the Xperia Ray, Arc and Neo our testing found that the software update affected the phone's speed and performance. These issues were present on three separate versions of the Android 4.0 software we tested and are caused by the software having more advanced hardware requirements than previous versions."

Sony itself acknowledges that the performance of your phone could be affected because of the hardware demands of Ice Cream Sandwich, with Motorola also making a similar point. 

"Because you can't revert back to an earlier version of Android without having your phone completely restored, we have decided not to approve the update... these phones will remain on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, which is a very stable platform."

Sony began updating the unlocked versions of all its 2011 Xperia line-up a few months ago, apart from the Xperia Play. The gaming handset was dropped from the Ice Cream Sandwich update list earlier this summer. Meanwhile, the current flagship Xperia, the Sony Xperia S, had problems with the update but is now back on track.

Updating to Ice Cream Sandwich should cheer us up, but no: a newer version of Android has arrived, so even when your phone is fully Ice Creamed up, we're upset that -- like the Xperia Arc S -- it's not getting Jelly Bean. We're never happy, are we?

Should networks and manufacturers take a stand when they don't think an update is up to scratch, or do you think you should have the right to take your chances? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.