It seems like there’s no joy for the owners of the 2011-based Xperia devices on O2 UK. Per reports, the British carrier has decided to block the update to Ice Cream Sandwich for three Xperia devices: Xperia Arc, Ray, and Neo.

While Sony has created some excitement among its owners with its IFA announcements in the past week, the devices’ British owners are left in the sidelines. What’s striking is that although Sony has already released the updates for unlocked versions of all three devices, O2 claims that performance issues have caused them to block the update for their customers.

“Unfortunately with the Xperia ray, arc and neo our testing found that the software update affected the phone’s speed and performance. These issues were present on three separate versions of the Android 4.0 software we tested and are caused by the software having more advanced hardware requirements than previous versions, as Sony explain on their site – “Android 4.0’s hardware requirements are more advanced than previous software updates, so your phone’s performance may be affected,”” the company states.

O2 UK also said that because the software affects the phone’s performance in the aforementioned way users cannot revert to an earlier version of Android, without having their phone completely restored. O2 averred that it has "decided not to approve the update," which implies that O2 customers with the Xperia Arc, Ray, and Neo handsets will not get the update. 

O2 customers with one of the above-mentioned devices will continue to remain on the Android Gingerbread platform.