HTC Desire owners face long wait for Android 2.3 Gingerbread update

The HTC Desire and its desirable siblings will receive an update to Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but owners could be facing a long wait. The current Desire range won't be updated until after the new Desire S launches in spring.

A HTC representative confirmed that the phones would be upgrading to Gingerbread during our natter at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but he wouldn't provide exact dates. We did manage to get HTC's man to say that the first Gingerbread update would be released within a month of the Desire S hitting shop shelves, but then he changed his mind and said it would probably occur within two months. 

The existing Desire phones won't receive the update all at once. HTC told us that the Desire HD and Desire Z would probably be first.

The Desire S will launch in the middle of the second quarter of 2011, which should hopefully mean we'll see it in shops sometime in May. The best-case scenario, therefore, is that older phones in the Desire range could receive an update by June. That means you'll have Gingerbread goodness with your ice cream in the summer.

What about the worst-case scenario? If the Desire S launches in late May or June, and the update takes two months, then it could be August or September before it's available for the older Desires. And we're only talking about HTC making the update available -- your network still has to tinker with it and send it your way, which is a notoriously slow process.

Depending on the networks and the time that lapses between updates for the different phones, the nights could be drawing in before Desire owners can enjoy the update.

The Desire HD and Desire Z are currently up to Android 2.2 Froyo. HTC lists the original Desire as still being on Android 2.1 Eclair, but networks should have pushed out a Froyo update by now.