True to their word, Sony has begun issuing Ice Cream Sandwich updates for its Xperia line in their final forms. The first phones to get Android 4.0 are the Xperia arc S, Xperia neo V and Xperia ray (which make may Shift key feel neglected each time I write about them). Right now the updates are limited to northern Europe: Demark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. According to Sony’s official blog post, these three phones will get updates around the globe over the next six weeks.

The arc S, neo V and ray phones were the first to get Sony’s official beta releases of Android 4.0, surprisingly released to developers and the public directly from Sony’s website. This kind of openness and commitment to appeasing power users is rare – and commendable. Sony’s also promised to upgrade each and every Xperia phone released last year to Ice Cream Sandwich, something that can’t be said for any other phone company that we know of. Sony might be a little late to the Ice Cream party, but they’re bringing the favors for sure. If you’re waiting on an update for these three phones but don’t live in one of the Nordic countries, give the beta a try.

The flagship Xperia S shouldn’t be too far behind, so you can expect its update to start coming out in the next few weeks. According to Sony’s previous posts, they should have all of their phones updated sometime this summer, presumably in all territories. Sony’s taking a unique approach to Ice Cream Sandwich updates: you won’t see them appear as an over-the-air alert, like most updates. Instead you’ll need to manually download the software from Sony’s update page, which you can find here.

[via DroidGamers]