Android 4.2 not coming to Nexus S and Xoom, support ends at 4.1.2

There’s never all good news without a bit of bad news accompanying it. While the Android 4.2 update has already begun rolling out for the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7, Google has announced that the Nexus S and Motorola Xoom will not be getting Android 4.2, and will remain on Android 4.1.2 forever.

Google’s Jean-Baptiste Queru (JBQ) confirmed this on the Google Groups page, though without any reason for the company’s decision to leave the two devices stuck at Android 4.1.2. The Nexus S might have aged beyond its capability to run Android 4.2 properly due to its now outdated hardware, including the low 512MB RAM, but one would think the dual-core Tegra 2 and 1GB RAM on the Xoom would be enough to run 4.2 without problems.

Of course, this could also be because Google wants people to buy the Nexus 10 and Nexus 4, though thanks to the lively Android development community, Android 4.2 will no doubt make an appearance via custom ROMs on both devices. However, it is still sad to see support ending at this point, no matter how good Google’s reasons might be.

Disappointed?