Via Twitter, HTC, the Taiwanese device manufacturer, announced today that their barely 18 month old flagship phones will not see official updates for anything past Jellybean.

HTC went on to elaborate, saying:

“We can confirm that the HTC One X and One X+ will not receive further Android OS updates beyond Android 4.2.2 with Sense 5. We realize this news will be met with disappointment by some, but our customers should feel confident that we have designed both devices to be optimized with our amazing camera and audio experiences.”

Well, thanks HTC! The real bummer is that KitKat was designed specifically to be able to run on older, legacy devices, so a lack support seems like abandonment rather than anything technical.

May be it was the lackluster sales, or maybe the next version of their proprietary UI, Sense, is too big of a resource hog. All we have is speculation.

Update: In light of this news and the predictable backlash, HTC had scheduled an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit for tomorrow.

Buuuuuuut then the backlash got worse, and the tweet was quickly deleted. Here’s what we have to go on now, take it for what you will:

Where Do You Go from Here?

If you haven’t rooted your HTC One X or One X+, now may be the time. Custom roms will be the only way these devices will see an update in Android version.

As long as you are rooted and there are developers with the device (and there are plenty with these devices), you should be able to manually keep up with the Android update cycle, as long as your hardware supports it.

So get busy rooting and flashing, or get ready to get a new phone. Are you going to stick with HTC? Let us know in the comments below.