Sony Ericsson’s decision earlier this year to freeze OS updates for the XPERIA X10 met with no small amount of disgust from owners of the smartphone, and their complaints were certainly vocal. Now, however, Sony Ericsson has backtracked and changed its mind, announcing that Android 2.3 Gingerbread will now be headed to the X10 at end Q2/early Q3 this year.

Sony Ericsson describe the decision as a response to consumer feedback and a side-effect of developing Gingerbread for the 2011 model range. There are a few things to consider, however. The update will be for generic handsets, not carrier-modified versions, and there’s no guarantee that the latter will ever get Gingerbread. The XPERIA X10 mini and mini pro won’t be getting Gingerbread, and Sony Ericsson says this really will be the final update for the X10 – it’ll see no subsequent updates after 2.3. There’ll also be some limitations compared to the XPERIA Arc and other 2011 handsets:

• The current plan is that the XperiaTM 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 XperiaTM X10.

Still, we have to give Sony Ericsson credit for changing its mind on a decision that left a lot of people furious about being early-adopters of the company’s handsets.

[via Clove]