Only days after avoiding another PR disaster, HTC has confirmed that the Desire will indeed be getting the Gingerbread update so many are lusting after. Their initial, now-retracted statement claimed that due to memory concerns it would not be able to optimally run the update. Unfortunately for them, many in the Android developer community called them out, as the Desire has been running custom Gingerbread ROMs for months.
HTC released a statement yesterday on their Twitter and Facebook pages stating:
“To resolve Desire’s memory issue and enable the upgrade to Gingerbread, we will cut select apps from the release. Look for status updates starting next week. We apologize for any confusion.”
Certainly welcome news, and proof that companies can appease their customers if the need is great enough.
However, there is some merit to HTC’s initial claim that the Desire can’t optimally run Gingerbread, and it’s due to partition sizes on the phone. Like the Nexus One, the Desire came with around 100MB of free app space, even though both phones had more than 500MB of ROM available for the operating system. Because HTC’s Sense Gingerbread ROM is significantly bigger than its Froyo ROM , it wasn’t a feasible update, as it would be on newer devices with significantly more ROM storage such as the Incredible S. By removing certain built-in Sense apps (likely things like Locations, their custom navigation software) and allowing users to download them from the Marketplace, they are lowering the overall size of the ROM without encroaching on the user’s app storage.
In terms of performance, however, we know that the Desire, like the Nexus One, can run Gingerbread just fine. Let’s hope Telus approves the update sooner rather than later!
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