HTC One S, the premium Android smartphone from the Taiwanese company, will not receive any Android updates going further.
The development was first reported by French site HubFR, which spotted a
comment made by HTC France on their Facebook page after a user asked about the company's plans to update the
HTC One S to Android 4.2.2. The company replied that the phone won't be getting the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean or the new Sense 5 update.
Following this, HTC also officially
confirmed that the phone will indeed not receive any updates.
"We can confirm that the HTC One S will not receive further Android OS updates and will remain on the current version of Android and HTC Sense. We realise this news will be met with disappointment by some, but our customers should feel confident that we have designed the HTC One S to be optimised with our amazing camera and audio experiences."
HTC One S was launched internationally in March 2012, so a little over a year old, so the development would definitely surprise the phone's owners. In fact, HTC had earlier
said that the phone, along with the
HTC One X,
HTC One X+ and
HTC Butterfly, would receive the Sense 5 update bringing software features from the
HTC One, the company's premium flagship phone. Sense 5 offers camera-related features like Zoe, a refreshed UI and BlinkFeed home screen updates. This means that HTC One S owners would not get to experience any of these new features in addition to other features offered by Android 4.2 that include lock screen notifications.
Although the HTC One S (
Review) sports specifications seen in mid-range smartphones, putting it below the HTC One X and One X+, it was launched at a price of Rs. 33,590, last year.
For a phone that costed above Rs. 30,000 (at launch) to not get updates, being abandoned by the company after a mere 16 months of launch, explains the current state of fragmentation within the Android device ecosystem. Contrast that to Apple's iOS and you'll notice that iPhone 4, a three year old phone is slated to receive iOS 7, the next iteration of Apple's mobile operating system.
HTC One S was launched in India in June 2012, featuring an over-clocked 1.7 GHz Snapdragon S3 processor instead of S4 processor and a 4.3-inch (540×960 pixels) display, Beats Audio, 8-megapixel auto focus camera with flash 1080p HD video recording and VGA front-facing camera similar to the One X. It has 1GB RAM, 16 GB internal storage and a 1,650 mAh battery. The phone launched with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich but
was updated to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and HTC Sense 4+.