Say what you will about Sony but, they’ve been making waves recently when it comes to their support of the AOSP and, today they’re announcing their plans concerning the Android 4.3 update and their Xperia devices. Get ready to see a lot of letters, folks.The Xperia Z, Xperia ZL, Xperia ZR, Xperia Tablet Z, Xperia SP and Xperia Z Ultra will all be getting the update to Android 4.3. While we’re definitely disappointed to not see the Xperia S and the Xperia T – both of which were launched in 2012 – make the list, it’s a pretty good start and we’re hoping that Sony will be adding more devices to this list as things progress.
Meanwhile, there’s talk of select devices skipping Android 4.2 and going straight to Android 4.3, which makes a lot of sense as it cuts down on the amount of testing that’s required for each update. After all, updating to 4.2 and then to 4.3 would certainly slow things down a little.
More interestingly, Sony have a little video to show off. It’s of the Xperia Tablet Z, which Sony recently gave AOSP support, running Android 4.3. Yepp, the same Android 4.3 that was just pushed to the AOSP yesterday. Take a look at the video below.
Sony are saying that the build isn’t ready just yet, as it’s still not packing all the same software as you’d find on a shipped device but, it’s great to see that they’ve already gotten into the code. It’s also in stark contrast to the cagey answer that HTC and Samsung gave yesterday, here Sony are laying out initial plans for a software upgrade and showing off the update on their latest tablet.
All in all, this is great to see from Sony, and we hope that they continue their support of AOSP and Open Source community projects like they have done in the recent past. If you’re interested in trying out Android 4.3 on the Tablet Z, you can get your hands on the source on GitHub.