HTC adds a bit more to why they are not updating the Desire HD to Ice Cream Sandwich

The story of why the HTC Desire HD smartphone will not get an update to Android 4.0 seems to be never ending. We first got word from Telus and then later from HTC. And well, it looks like HTC had a bit more to say on the matter. In this latest offering, HTC acknowledges that this was a controversial decision and goes on to offer more detail. Basically, in order to update the Desire HD to ICS they would have to re-partition the device storage which means overwriting the user data and that was a path that they felt the “majority” of the users would not like to take. Anyway, those interested in the full side of the story from HTC, here is what they had to say;

“We’ve heard your feedback on our decision not to update the HTC Desire HD to Android 4.0. We completely understand that this is a controversial decision.

For more background, due to how storage on the HTC Desire HD is partitioned – and the larger size of Android 4.0 – it would require re-partitioning device storage and overwriting user data in order to install this update. While technically advanced users might find this solution acceptable, the majority of customers would not. We also considered ways to reduce the overall size of the software package, but this would impact features and functionality that customers are currently using. Even after installing the update, there were other technical limitations which we felt negatively impacted the user experience.

We believe an update should always improve the user experience and carefully evaluate each update based on this criteria. While we are very aware of the disappointment from this decision, we believe the impact to user experience was too great. We recognize this is a change from our previous statement and for that we’re truly sorry.”

Via [HTC Blog]