Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is one of the most popular Android smartphone. This handset is also the company’s largest selling Android device. Xperia X10 was launched last year and the handset originally runs on the old Android 1.6 operating system. Even though Xperia X10 got the Android 2.1 update in the second half of 2010, Sony Ericsson officially said that, they won’t release any future Android update for this smartphone.

Xperia X10 users were stuck forever with the Android 2.1 OS. But, Sony Ericsson recently shocked everyone, after announcing the latest Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) update for the Xperia X10 smartphone. This handset will be directly updated to Android 2.3 from the Android 2.1 OS. After updating the handset to Android 2.3, camera features, such as the face recognition and smile shutter will be lost forever. Check out the complete changes below.

• The current plan is that the Xperia X10 will get the Android standard Camera user interface and therefore features like e.g. face recognition, smile shutter etc will be lost.
• Moxier is replaced by the gingerbread native EAS functionality.
• Mediascape is being replaced by the media experience widgets and music player included in our new 2011 products.
• DRM keys for protected content on your phone will be lost in the upgrade process.
• The Sony Ericsson Backup and Restore client is not supported in the Gingerbread version and will therefore be lost.
• Support for bi-directional languages will be reduced compared to the latest version of the 2.1 version of the Xperia X10.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 will get the Android 2.3 update during Q2 or early Q3 of 2011. The upgrade will only be available through the PC-based upgrade clients and it cannot be done over the air. However, Sony Ericsson users should note that the Xperia X10 mini, mini pro and Xperia X8 won’t be upgraded to the Android 2.3 OS. To learn more, head over to this post at the Sony Ericsson blog.