Owners of Sony Ericsson smartphones released last year now have some hope of seeing some bugs fixed.

Last Tuesday, Sony Ericsson confirmed that owners of the P990i, W950 and M600i models would not see any further firmware updates.

Yesterday morning, however, the company relented, in the face of a wave of angry feedback from Sony Ericsson customers and developers.

A note posted to the company's developer site by Sony Ericsson Developer Support confirmed:

In response to recent feedback from users and as a result of additional internal testing, Sony Ericsson has determined to offer a further firmware update for the P990 and W950 Walkman phone. This move illustrates Sony Ericsson's ongoing commitment to its existing "smartphone" customers and the company's desire to be responsive to customer feedback in order to provide an optimal user experience.

The next firmware release for the P990 and W950 will be available from the Sony Ericsson Update Service from August 2007.

Alas, that leaves what is currently the least-buggy and most-usable of the trio, the M600i, out in the cold. A number of issues mean the M600i can't be reliably used as an alarm clock.

Coincidentally, the M600i is about to be superseded by the very similar P1 phone, and its cut-down camera-less sibling, the M610i. ®