



The latest in a string of timely announcements when and which exactly Sony handsets will get Android 4.0 ICS , is a developer blog post in which Sony is quite frank whether you should upgrade at all, despite the great new interface and novel features that ICS brings.





The Android device maker lists all the pros and cons of Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich, indicating that the latest and greatest is not suitable for everyone, and some might just choose to stay with the proven and stable Gingerbread for their 2011 Sony Ericsson handsets with 1-1.4GHz CPUs and 512MB of RAM. The different interface layout made Sony revamp more than a thousand icons for the ICS edition, and some features in Android 4.0 actually use more RAM, chipset and battery than the equivalents in Gingerbread.





We took out some excerpts from the post that should be a must-read for everyone impatient to hit the update button and go from Gingerbread to ICS:

Sony hedges its bets by clarifying that it has addressed most of these issues by optimizing the RAM usage as much as possible and working directly with partners to optimize the database queries handling.





The best part is that Sony will be providing a so-called Performance Assistant , which gives you the opportunity to turn off some features in Android Ice Cream Sandwich from the start - those you don't necessarily need, but which might otherwise affect performance, like the hardware accelerated video playback than drains the battery faster, for example.





Ever since Sony made the upgrade kerfuffle with its first Android phones (remember the Xperia X 10 stuck at Eclair for what seemed an eternity?) it has probably been the most open and helpful firm when it comes to Android updates.