(Credit: CBSi)

Desire owners, you might want to sit down for this. We have some bad news.

HTC has posted on its UK Facebook page that there will be no Gingerbread (Android 2.3) firmware update for the incredibly popular HTC Desire smartphone. This is contrary to an earlier commitment by the company to release an update for the original Desire in line with updates for the more recent Desire Z and Desire HD handsets. According to the Facebook post, the issue relates to a lack of memory:

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.

The Desire, which was updated to the 2.2 Android firmware in October last year, runs on 576MB RAM, which, as many pundits point out, is more memory than the new Wildfire S uses; a phone with both Gingerbread and the Sense UI. That said, HTC's customer service track record is pretty solid to date, and it seems unlikely to us that the company would risk its hard-earned good will to force customers into an early upgrade.

If you're a tech savvy Desire owner looking to upgrade using unofficial methods, check out our guide to rooting your Desire, and consider some of the more popular Gingerbread ROMs on the XDA Developers Forum.