Sony to hand out Jelly Beans to Xperia phones come February 2013

News about Jelly Bean updates for non-Nexus Android phones continue to trickle out. Sony is the latest company to provide us with an update... update: most of its Android phones will begin to see Android 4.1 in February 2013, with others following in the weeks and months after. The exception will be most phones with only 512MB of RAM. The Sony Xperia U, Xperia miro, Xperia sola, and Xperia tipo will all be stuck on Ice Cream Sandwich despite the fact that none of these phones are even a year old.

Aside from this list, which consists entirely of low-end or mid-range phones, the list of Xperias that will be getting Jelly Bean next year is actually quite extensive. The Xperia T, Xperia TX, and Xperia V will be the first to be updated in February, as befits their status as Sony's flagship Android phones. The Xperia P, Xperia J, and Xperia Go will follow at the end of March, while the Xperia S, Xperia SL, Xperia ion, and Xperia acro S will get their update in "the subsequent weeks." Sony also states that "availability and rollout timing will vary by market and customer variants," which means that depending on where you live and what carrier you're on, you may not see these updates  on Sony's proposed timetable.

The phones getting Jelly Bean all use at least 1GB of RAM, with the exception of the Xperia Go and Xperia J, which only have 512MB. "The quality of Xperia’s software experience is dependent on a number of factors including: screen resolution, hardware platform and RAM," a Sony spokesperson told The Next Web. "In the case of Xperia Go, this combination came together in a way that meant the user experience running JB was not adversely affected. Unfortunately, in the case of Xperia tipo, Xperia miro, Xperia U and Xperia sola this wasn’t the case—so we made the decision to keep them on Ice Cream Sandwich." One assumes this logic also applies to the unmentioned Xperia J.

The Xperia Go and J are rare exceptions, but most OEMs and carriers who are planning Jelly Bean rollouts at all seem to agree that 1GB of RAM is the minimum required to run the operating system smoothly: HTC's Jelly Bean update is also skipping phones with 512MB of RAM.