They said it won’t happen, but Sony Ericsson has just confirmed that the Xperia X10 will be getting Gingerbread after all.

“We earlier stated that we did not have plans for further upgrade of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 beyond Android 2.1 Éclair, which was correct at the time,” the company’s blog starts out before going on to say:

“However, I am happy to inform you that this has changed. We plan to bring an upgrade to Android Gingerbread for the Xperia X10 to generic trade kits end Q2 / early Q3 this year.”

Yay, we hear you cry, but there’s a catch.

“Due to the resources available in this special project, we will focus on delivering trade versions of the software.”

That means that if you’ve got a branded operator handset then chances are you still aren’t going to get the update:

“Regarding possible customized operators kit we will have to get back with more information on this at a later stage. But we want to be very clear already at this stage on the fact that some of you may not get this upgrade.”     

But if you are lucky enough to have a non-operator branded version of the Xperia X10 then you can get ready to enjoy all the similar software and functionality on the Xperia X10 as we have in our new 2011 Xperia smartphones.

“Our ambition is to provide the majority of functionality of the Gingerbread platform, as well as the Sony Ericsson specific User Experience and features. The final scope of the software is still a work in progress.”

In addition to that it’s not going to be plain sailing either with a number of features and content getting lost in the upgrade:

"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."

Elsewhere 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, and DRM keys for protected content on your phone will be lost in the upgrade process.

The Sony Ericsson Backup and Restore client is also not supported in the Gingerbread version and will therefore be lost, and support for bi-directional languages will be reduced compared to the latest version of the 2.1 version of the Xperia X10.

The upgrade will only be available through our PC-based upgrade clients, i.e. it cannot be done over the air, and once you go for it there is no turning back as Sony Ericsson’s upgrade solutions do not support downgrading.

As for owners of the Xperia X10 mini, mini pro and Xperia X8, move along now there is nothing to see. No, you will never be getting an upgrade, Sony Ericcson has said.