Let the update races begin! It looks like Sprint has beaten all other U.S. carriers to the punch and begun rolling out Jelly Bean to its Samsung Galaxy S III users. Timely updates are extremely important to consumers and it’s good to see Sprint recognizing customer’s needs.

We already heard from Sony today, why not Motorola next? Motorola has made a few changes to their list of devices that are scheduled to receive Android 4.1 and you might find a few surprises.

Sony has taken to its blog to give users a better idea on the status of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) and which devices they plan on updating. According to the post, Sony’s latest smartphone models: Xperia T, Xperia TX and Xperia V, will all begin to receive the upgrade to Jelly Bean from mid-Q1 2013. After that, the global versions of Xperia S, Xperia acro S, Xperia ion, Xperia P, Xperia go and Xperia J will all be upgraded to Android 4.1 (no set time frame given).

Last week we caught wind of a soak test going out to Bionic users and speculated that it had to be Ice Cream Sandwich. Well… it was and it’s been approved by Verizon. You’ll now find the support documents for the Ice Cream Sandwich update located on Verizon’s support page which means a release is right around the corner. It’s pretty safe to say Bionic users have written off Motorola at this point, but perhaps a little Ice Cream Sandwich will ease the pain until they become eligible for an upgrade.

As Android 4.1 slowly rolls out to Galaxy S III users around the globe, U.S. owners can’t help but wonder when they can expect the tasty Jelly Bean update. Well, Samsung doesn’t want to leave everyone hanging like most OEMs do. That’s why they’ve sent out a press release to ensure everyone that Jelly Bean is, in fact, on the way.