Sony pushing ICS to more devices next week, confirms Xperia Play won't be upgraded

Owners of the Xperia Play, it's time to curl up with a teddy bear and your favorite ice cream -- just as long as it's not in sandwich form. After the sudden and unexplained disappearance of the "PlayStation Phone" from the Android 4.0 upgrade list yesterday, Sony has followed it up with a full confirmation accompanied by the usual explanation. As you may have already guessed, the manufacturer tells us that after extensive testing, it was determined that "a consistent and stable experience, particularly with gaming, cannot be guaranteed for this smartphone on Ice Cream Sandwich... in this instance the ICS upgrade would have compromised stability." Sony went on to discuss that it received similar feedback from the developer community after releasing a beta ROM. Still, after being told repeatedly that the entire 2011 smartphone lineup would receive the update, we can't help but be a bit heartbroken by the news.
In the same breath, however, Sony also updated its timeline for the rest of the lineup that is still on schedule to receive upgrades to Ice Cream Sandwich: the Xperia arc, neo, mini, mini pro, pro, active and Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman will begin receiving their refreshes next week. The Xperia S is still on track for an end of June rollout, with the Xperia P closely following it and the Xperia U sometime in the third quarter. It's just unfortunate that the good tidings must be balanced out by equally horrible news, depending on which device you own.

Cyanogenmod 9 struts its stuff on HTC's One X

So you've procured yourself HTC's new super slim, 4.7-inch halo phone: the One X. By now, you probably have the device set up just the way you like it: applications configured, widgets in place and Adele ringtone set. But there's just something else left to do, isn't there? If (like some of us) you're a smartphone user who just can't leave well enough alone, you'll be excited to learn that a build of Cyanogenmod 9 for the Uno Equis has been made available via the MoDaCo forums. The ROM will deliver that stock Android experience, and all those CM9 accoutrements, to those that don't fancy the panache of Sense 4.0. The forum post does caution that the One's camera, and hotspot functionality, aren't currently working, so interested parties best proceed with caution. If all that doesn't phase you, grab a cup of coffee, get the Android SDK all warmed up and take this ROM for a spin!

Transformer Prime gets power of reincarnation with Team Win Recovery Project 2.1.2

Known affectionately as Twrp, this handy utility allows you to backup and recover your Android world even as you flit effortlessly between different custom ROMs. Two-point-oh worked great on a limited selection of devices, like the Nexus S, Kindle Fire and TouchPad, but this latest update brings improved support for Honeycomb tablets and ICS handsets like the Galaxy Nexus, while also doing its thing on the Transformer Prime for the first time. Team Win has even introduced a OpenRecoveryScript function, which lets apps influence the recovery process in order to preserve even more consciousness across rebirths. Now, if only we could root karma.