Every manufacturer of mobile products seems to be working hard on bringing the most recent version of the Android operating system to their devices. Currently, there is only a few devices running Android 6.0 Marshmallow, although many devices are expected to receive the update throughout the year. Sony usually release this kind of update after many others, but they update many of their devices while doing so. The company took an interesting approach towards this particular update and released a Marshmallow Concept version for some of their devices back in October. This was meant to be used by developers and limited users who could then report back to the company about issues or bugs they might have found with the early build.
The software looked almost like the stock version of Android and lacked many features. Sony constantly updated the Marshmallow Concept adding more features and UI enhancements. Initially, users could use this software until late 2015, but the company extended the trial period until early 2016, so users did not have to uninstall it so soon and return to the official release that was running on their devices originally. Sony Developers sent out a survey for those users running the Concept build to know how they felt about the software and how long they would like to run it. The results have since been released and it seems that over 80% of the users would like to keep running the Concept build for as long as they can. Only a small percentage said they would like to leave the program soon, while others would like to keep it for a few more weeks or months.
Apparently, the software runs smoothly and it seems to be quite stable, additionally, users appreciated the timely firmware updates and Doze mode really seemed to provide better battery life. We still don’t know if this is how the final build will end up looking or if additional features will be included. We probably won’t have to wait too long though to find out as the company may unveil a couple of devices at MWC 2016 and if rumors turn out to be true, they could be launched running Android 6.0 out of the box.