Sony Mobile will be ending all development work on its Xperia Weather application, according to Project Manager Peter Arvidsson. That’s not great news for those Sony users who were looking forward to what Arvidsson refers to as a “big change” that was promised. Namely, the company had previously planned to completely rework the application from top to bottom, along with redesigned widgets. Better customization and more in-depth information had been included as part of that promise as well. However, a “business decision” on the part of Sony’s management ultimately led to any further development of the app being shelved. In fact, Arvidsson says that users should be aware that the team behind the app will no longer be able to implement suggested changes or act on user feedback at all. There will be one more beta version of the app released with some behind-the-scenes optimizations.
In effect, the app will now enter a “maintenance phase,” meaning it will continue to exist in its current form beyond the final beta release but that there won’t be any new features, UI changes, or other big updates for the foreseeable future. For the development team’s part, the decision to halt work has not been fully supported by team members but the only updates moving forward will be bug fixes. The team does expect that it will be able to incorporate maintenance for the next several Android versions as well, so Sony’s Xperia Weather app shouldn’t suddenly stop working when fans of Sony’s ecosystem and devices upgrade or update to a product running Android P or Android Q.
The change in direction also doesn’t appear as though it’s going to have any impact on other similar Sony programs. Moreover, the project manager says that any rumors that Sony will be exiting the mobile space or any other portion of the consumer electronics market are entirely false. Arvidsson did not go into detail but did indicate that those types of speculation are in complete contradiction with has been said at a recent Sony Investor Relations gatherings. In any case, there are plenty of other apps out there for information about the weather, so the decision to end development on Xperia Weather doesn’t seem as though it will impact the company too severely at all.