Company confirms Gingerbread before the end of July

It’s been on and off more than a soap opera wedding, but it has now been confirmed that the HTC Desire will get its Android update – and soon.

How soon? How does this month grab you? Yes, that is indeed the official timescale. HTC took to its current favoured method of communication (Facebook) to confirm the date: ‘Hi everyone. As some of you have seen already, we have more news about our build of Gingerbread for Desire. Our testing has gone well so we will begin rolling out the update by the end of July. Thank you again for your support.’

So Android 2.3 Gingerbread could be coming to your smartphone very soon. ‘Could’ being the operative word here. First in the queue will be anyone with a SIM-free model, with the networks almost certain to do their own testing before unleashing it on their handsets. That could add weeks, even months, to the scenario. So the end of summer, early autumn might be a better timescale to work with.

The detail has yet to be confirmed, with HTC already admitting that the release isn’t going to be the full package. According to HTC, it has ‘cut select apps from the release’, so you might want to read up ahead of the download to find out exactly what you are getting – and how much memory the update will take out. If we see the fineprint anytime soon, we’ll let you know.