The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is the first and the only smartphone coming with Sony PlayStation certificate. But those who have missed this device thinking to buy its follow-up are probably disappointed because Sony has already announced there won’t be any Xperia Play 2. The main reason of such a decision are the difficulties Sony met when developing games for it — there was some strange software incompatibility and instability with the gaming services. Moreover, this has been preventing the company from customizing Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for the smartphone, and as a result Sony announced this phone will never get ICS update. Well, if you have suffered enough, I have some news that can cheer you up.

Sony’s Xperia line is already getting Android 4.0 ICS updates, and there are only a few smartphones that will stick to their current software version. The Xperia Play was known as one of them, but recently the scrapped software update was found as a certified build. This was a big surprise, because we had all lost our hope to see something like that. We can’t say whether this is a test build or a custom one, but it seems the certification process had started before the announcement saying the Xperia Play won’t get Android ICS.

However, even if Sony doesn’t update the Xperia Play, we’ll have to understand that this phone differs from all other Android handsets and it’s not a simple work to customize the code for this phone. Just have a look at its form factor and those integrated physical gaming controls! Android is the most popular software in the world, but maybe it’s not powerful enough to cooperate with such projects.

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