This past summer, Sony was working with Jean-Baptiste Queru to get the Sony Xperia S supported under AOSP. It caught the attention of everyone. Who wouldn’t love to see a non-Nexus device be supported as an AOSP device? The only other device to do that is the WiFi version of the Motorola Xoom.
Although the project did see some progress, Android was booting up successfully. Sony also said that Wi-Fi and sensors were up and running successfully as well. But because of proprietary software binaries, that could not be a part of AOSP because it requires legitimate open source code only, it looked like audio and mobile network modem functionality was a no go.
So with that being said, Sony and Google have decided that this experiment has gone as far as it can go. And they have moved the project over to GitHub, you can find the link in the sources below.
Sony is trying to get the proprietary binaries opened up, but that will take some negotiating with chip manufacturers. The final goal of Sony’s team is to get Android 4.2 working on the Xperia S, so that it can be used as a development platform for more devices in the future.
Sad to see the project end, but at least Sony isn’t giving up all hope on it. What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments.
Source: Sony Mobile Developer Blog, GitHub