Bad news for the HTC Desire owners out there who were hoping to get their Gingerbread on sometime in the near future. It’s not going to happen due to the handset’s lack of memory. The Sensi-fied version of the Nexus One has been a favorite of ours even with great hardware selection out there today, so what’s the deal?

In a Facebook post, HTC UK explains:

Our engineering teams have been working hard for the past few months to find a way to bring Gingerbread to the HTC Desire without compromising the HTC Sense experience you’ve come to expect from our phones. However, we’re sorry to announce that we’ve been forced to accept there isn’t enough memory to allow us both to bring Gingerbread and keep the HTC Sense experience on the HTC Desire. We’re sincerely sorry for the disappointment that this news may bring to some of you.

HTC Sense is easily one of the most heavily customized skins available for Android. HTC has done wonders with the OS, but its times like this that show just how annoying custom skins can be on devices. Sense may be beautiful, but what’s the point if the skin itself will keep the phone from receiving future updates? The statement above leaves something out that the manufacturer can’t fit into the Desire’s memory, and that’s the network’s bloatware apps.

We’re starting to see why HTC has been throwing large chunks of memory into its newer handsets and its likely not because it wants its users to have that extra memory for themselves, it’s for it’s bloated UI to be able to run smoothly. Overweight UIs like this not only demand more from a phone’s RAM, but as you can see, it also can affect just how long a device is good for. The fact that the Desire won’t be getting the Gingerbread update isn’t the end of the world, but users with the handset should look into other options.

Custom ROM makers like MoDaCo have made a way for users to “cook” their own ROM in the form of an online kitchen. It’s as simple as selecting the applications you actually use in the OS and bypassing the applications that have done nothing but collected virtual dust in your phone. While HTC provides a robust feature set within Sense UI, most users likely don’t take advantage of all of the customized applications. If the company provided a stripped down version of Sense, or at least a way to uninstall these bloatware apps, we probably wouldn’t be posting this article today.

Even if the Desire won’t be getting the Gingerbread update, I think HTC should release the source code for the update itself. The company has been working on it for quite a while now, so there has to be something to work with. Then again, I’m not sure if HTC would like to see Android developers succeed at something it couldn’t do. That said, I do hope that Android developers take this as a personal challenge.

So Desire users, what’s your next move? Will you begin to look into custom ROMs for your handset or is it time to upgrade?

via