Earlier this week, we posted that Sony was looking for Xperia Z3 users in Sweden who were interested in taking part of a new initiative, almost like a beta test. For Sony’s new software for Android. Today, Sony has published a blog post on their Mobile site about this new concept, and it looks beautiful. Essentially they’ve stripped out everything and is going for a more stock approach. And will feature Sony’s features and apps. So you’ll still have cool features like PlayStation Remote.
Sony says that they’ve started listening to their users, and that their users want a more vanilla Android approach. So this new initiative that’s starting in Sweden will give around 500 Xperia Z3 users the opportunity to try out this new concept on their device. This is Sony’s fresh take on their UX on top of Android 5.1 Lollipop – which is actually beginning to roll out this week. Sony has stripped back their UX, and have kept native Sony features and apps that the company found were the most popular among all of their users.
Obviously, with this initiative, it’s going to be vitally important for the users using this concept for Android to report back any bugs. As well as let their opinion and experience be known to Sony engineers. So that the UX can be critiqued before it rolls out to everyone. Sony also says that this trial is going to help them determine whether they should run these types of concept initiatives in more markets and with more devices and users in the future. Sony is looking to adopt more transparent and open workflows, as well as creating a user experience that gets input from the user. Which is going to be very important for building Sony’s customer base, and keeping that customer base.
Looking at the screenshots that Sony have posted on their blog, it looks really nice. While they say it’s a big change, it doesn’t really look like a huge change. As Sony’s UX wasn’t all that far from vanilla Android in the first place. Hopefully we’ll see this land on Sony’s future devices, perhaps the Xperia Z5 later this year or in 2016?