When Sony Ericsson announced that they would not be upgrading the Xperia X10 past Android 2.1, this left a lot of users very angry and caused many to swear they’d never go back to Sony Ericsson. In light of this, Sony Ericsson have listened to the feedback and have today confirmed that the Xperia X10 will be updated past Android 2.1.

They will skip Android 2.2 and move straight onto 2.3, which is currently the latest version of Android available. The work they’ve done with the new line of handsets, the Xperia Arc, Neo and Play has enabled them to work with Android 2.3 and gave them a solution to making 2.3 possible on the X10. The update will be Android 2.3.3 and will become available from the end of Q2/early Q3.

It was recently announced that the Xperia X10 won’t be upgraded to Android 2.2 even if Sony Ericsson has the Xperia Arc running in Android 2.3. The reason for this was explained recently by Nathan Vautier, a representative of Sony Ericsson for UK and Ireland.

It seems that the company engineers are having a hard time in “uncoupling” the Timescape user interface from the Android operating system. They actually were able to pull it off in the Xperia Arc but had no luck with the X10.  Basically, the X10 will remain as it is and not have any more OS upgrades. Sony Ericsson even commented that Android 2.1 was even equal or even better than Android 2.2 on this model.

Despite all the uproar about Sony Ericsson’s flagship Xperia handset having an outdated OS when it launched with Android 1.6 and when the company released Android 2.1, when 2.3 was just around the corner, the company have announced that they will not update the Xperia X10, X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro, or Xperia X8 past Android 2.1. Sony Ericsson have already come under fire for the delay of Android 2.1 on the handset and several petitions were started online asking Sony Ericsson to skip Android 2.1 and go straight to 2.2. This wasn’t to happen though, as 2.2 aka Froyo, will not be making it’s way to the Xperia X10 range of handsets. For the US particularly, this has given the handset a minimal lifespan, consisting of less than 6 months. Unfortunately, Sony Ericsson don’t see it this way. They have promised further minor updates to the handset, such as the multi touch update, coming sometime this quarter but, the Android version will not be going any higher.

While the Xperia X10 recently received the Android 2.1 update, many were hoping it would be Android 2.2, with a petition started months ago for the release of Android 2.2. Now, with 2.1 on most X10′s (subject to country/network) and Android 2.3 on the way, it’s led to many asking questions again about the availability of Android 2.2 on the Xperia X10.

As we’ve learnt in the past, what one Sony Ericsson employee says isn’t necessarily true, however it’s very encouraging none the less. One user sent a message on the Turkish Sony Ericsson support site asking about Android 2.2 on the Xperia X10. The response that was received back (translated) is: “SE X10 will get the Android 2.2 update during the second quarter of 2011. Work is still currently ongoing on version 2.2.” While this is good news for X10 owners, that the Xperia X10 will not remain stuck on Android 2.1, by this time, Android 2.3 will probably be on most top Android devices.

Until recently, the Xperia X10 was stuck with a rather outdated version of Android, 1.6. Within the past month however, Sony Ericsson have now released Android 2.1 for the handset but, this still is relatively outdated for some and some regions/networks still haven’t received the Android 2.1 update for their Xperia X10 handsets.

With regards to Android 2.2, Sony Ericsson have recently said that as of yet, they can’t say whether the X10 will get 2.2 or not but, with this latest advancement from developers, if you’re willing to flash your phone, it really won’t matter that much to you what Sony Ericsson decide.