ICS to land on the Sony Xperia U in the next few weeks

In the Android ecosystem, whenever a new version of the Android operating system is released, you can expect the high-end devices to be the first in line to get upgraded to that latest version. We saw this happen when Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was released when the ICS update first landed on the Galaxy S II, then Samsung’s flagship device and on the HTC Sensation, the top-tier handset of HTC. If you happen to rock a midranger, there is a big chance that your handset may never see the update to the latest iteration of the Google mobile operating system.

Sony however bucked this trend and made a lot of headway in making Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich worked beautifully and seamlessly with midrange handsets packing modest components under the hood. This was the case when the manufacturer rolled out the ICS update to a couple of its midrange devices such as the Sony Xperia Mini and Sony Xperia Mini Pro which proved that even a modest specs sheet can actually take on an Android version as current as Ice Cream Sandwich.

This time around, Sony is continuing that trend when it announced that the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will land next on the Sony Xperia U. The handset is the leading budget offering of the manufacturer and was released back in May packing Android 2.3 Gingerbread for its operating system. Sony promised users of the Sony Xperia U that it will also get a tasty treat of Ice Cream Sandwich and it looks like users of the handset won’t have that long to wait for the update to make its way to their handsets.

In line with this, Sony has announced that the rollout of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to the Sony Xperia U will commence within the next few weeks. In addition to that, the manufacturer also confirmed that the rollout of ICS will happen in a stagger manner so not all users of the handset will get the much-awaited upgrade to ICS at the same time. There was no mention of a specific timeframe in the announcement but at least, users of the Sony Xperia U will have a rough timeframe as to how much wait is still in store for them until their devices finally get upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich.

As for the Sony Xperia U, the handset has its circuitry built around its STE U8500 chipset and this SoC brings into play a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor clocked at 1 GHz and 512 MB of RAM. It also comes with a Mali-400MP graphics core to handle messy graphical situations. In terms of storage capacity, the Sony Xperia U comes with an internal memory pegged at 8GB with 4GB of this set aside for user content. Sad to say, there is no memory expansion option here for that matter. In terms of its display, the Sony Xperia U comes with a 3.5-inch LED-backlit LCD panel with a 480 x 854 resolution while its dual-shooter configuration includes a rear 5MP shooter and a front VGA video call and self-portrait camera.