HTC’s first words on Jelly Bean updates came right on the heels of the Android 4.1 launch and is now working to further confirm their update timetable. HTC has posted a Frequently Asked Question page on Jelly Bean updates and there’s plenty of good news for HTC One S owners:
We’re looking forward to providing our HTC One X and HTC One S customers with Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) along with our latest version of HTC Sense. As with any software upgrade, we work closely with our carrier partners to ensure we deliver the best experience possible on our devices.
After internal testing, we test the software on live networks in order to confirm the experience matches our expectations, and carrier expectations, for performance, connectivity and platform stability. While testing takes time, we’re working quickly with our carrier partners to rollout these updates. We’ll provide information on availability once the software is ready for release.
As for other devices, HTC says they are focused on their 2012 lineup of devices now (see One X/S) but will work with carrier partners around the globe to “consider our ability to provide updates to products from 2011.”
In other words, if your HTC devices has less 512MB of RAM or less, you likely won’t see any official updates from HTC. One added note on this page is HTC’s response as to why updates take so long to release:
Our goal is to make sure that an upgrade provides an improved customer experience and that means a high standard of quality for hardware compatibility, adapting device or carrier specific customizations, testing by HTC and partners, addressing device hardware constraints, and many other factors.
The last note is that all devices updated to Android 4.1, will include the HTC Sense 4+ update.