The Desire will see a stripped-down version of Sense as part of the Gingerbread update.

HTC Desire owners had a slight scare this week when HTC stated via its U.K. Facebook page that the popular smartphone would not get an Android 2.3 Gingerbread update.

Considering the Desire is barely a year old, the news came as a surprise to users, and, as one would imagine, the comments in the Facebook thread were not overly pleasant. Even U.K. wireless carrier Three was caught off guard by the statement and apologized to its subscribers.

HTC retracted the statement later and said the Desire will get a Gingerbread update, but it will need to "cut select (Sense) apps from the release" in order to free up some memory for the software. Both the U.K. and U.S. versions of the Desire offer 512MB ROM, while more recent products in the Desire line come with 1GB of memory.

The news that some apps will be lost doesn't seem to be too upsetting for customers. A quick look through HTC's Facebook page indicates plenty of users would be fine without apps such as Peep, Friend Stream, or Footprints.

HTC said it will provide more details through Facebook next week.