Sony published a list of devices that will get an update to Android 5.1 Lollipop. Users of phones and tablets that got the official Android 5.0 already should not be worried as Lollipop will be bumped on those devices in July. The list contains no less than twenty devices that should get the OTA notification before August.
Here’s a list of supported models:
Xperia Z4
Xperia Z4 Tablet
Xperia Z3+
Xperia Z3+ Dual
Xperia Z3 (Z3 Dual)
Xperia Z3 Compact
Xperia Z3 Compact Tablet
Xperia Z2
Xperia Z2 Tablet
Xperia Z1
Xperia Z1 Compact
Xperia Z Ultra
Xperia Z
Xperia ZL
Xperia ZR
Xperia Tablet Z
Xperia T2 Ultra (T2 Ultra Dual)
Xperia C3 (Xperia C3 Dual)
Xperia M2
Xperia M2 Dual
Xperia M2 Aqua
Xperia M4 Aqua, Xperia E4 and Xperia C4 are believed to get the Android 5.1 Lollipop too, but this should take place in August. The bad news is that phones like Xperia T3 and Xperia E3 will likely remain at Android 4.4 KitKat. There is no confirmation about update availability either at the Sony Blog or official product pages. Luckily enough there are some custom ROMs that can easily become daily drivers even without Sony’s blessing. Just unlock the bootloader, dive into your device forum and find something that fills the bill.
Is your device waiting for the update? Let us know in the comment section below!
A few updates ago, Chrome for Android began allowing users to add a site’s web-app to their homescreen, and v44 brings a similar functionality for a site’s native app. Users visiting the website are prompted to install the app, with the description and permissions pages being displayed within the browser itself.
Android Wear is a platform that is not for everybody, at least not yet. As of now, smartwatches have not found a motive to enter the mainstream consumers’ lives. One could argue that the competition is making huge strides in this regard, but despite the pragmatic advances seen in the latest additions from all parties, smartwatches today are not much more than glorified notification glancers.
And I say this as the biggest Wear lover in the XDA Portal Team. I’ve purchased three Wear watches to date, but not without discounts. Without those, I probably wouldn’t have bought a single one. As they stand, Wear watches are useful, but hardly enough to justify paying over $200 for one if you are not a power users or would really benefit from having one. I fall in both camps, but because I am a little cheap, I still hesitated and only bought them on sales (got my Moto 360 for just $60!). I do believe that the best of Wear is yet to come… whenever Google wants it to. Keep in mind that the following is mostly based on my personal opinions and worries, so take this feature as an editorial instead of our usual analysis.
As our team covered Google I/O, we could not help but be utterly disappointed at Google’s presentation on Wear. We had our hopes high – a little too high, perhaps – and we expected new software and hardware. The internet was already buzzing with predictions about a new Moto 360 being announced at the event, but to our surprise, nothing of the sort happened. Google spent a few minutes talking about their latest software version (which had its debut with the Urbane), and touted its capabilities. We didn’t hear anything substantial regarding the future of Wear, other than the fact that more watches were coming. This left a sour taste in our mouth, but most importantly got us to think about the platform.
The main keynote focused on Android M, the upcoming Brillo, Weave, and many improvements to all of their platforms. Wear saw no practical news. This is a problem, mainly because the smartwatch game should be picking up by now, and competition is getting tougher in this space. The Apple Watch did really well for being such an unnecessary gadget, Samsung’s Tizen smartwatches have been getting increasingly refined iteration after iteration and a new round watch is said to be coming, the Pebble Time is arriving after a successful Kickstarter campaign (again!) and the webOS in the Urbane LTE got very good reviews as well. None of this means that Wear is in trouble by default, but without a clear vision for the platform in crucial times, I am starting to fear that its potential might remained unexploited for longer than it should.
The latest 5.1 revision for Wear brought the much needed wrist gestures and Wi-Fi support (which helps with feature parity against the competition), but the update still hasn’t fully rolled out – particularly when it comes to the Moto 360, which is arguably Wear’s flagship. As the number of Wear watches grows bigger, the Google-centric rollouts seem to become more inconsistent. On April 20th, Google said that the update should be rolling out “in the next few weeks”, yet 6 weeks later, tens of thousands of users (meaning a significant chunk of Wear owners) don’t have the latest software. Google’s tight hold on Wear manifests itself in other worrying ways as well:
Android as a platform evolved rapidly, and this was partially because of the freedom it gave OEMs when it came to experimenting with software and hardware. We saw Android phones with all sorts of innovations in these regards, but as it stands, Wear’s closedness does not allow for key developments. A big aspect of smartwatches as a concept is health and fitness, but different kinds of monitoring sensors for other tasks could also be huge on the platform. While Android phone makers had freedom to put anything from screen projectors to UV light sensors on their phones, without being able to modify the base software the task becomes much harder on Wear. This halts the possible innovations that OEMs could bring to the table for the sake of consistency, but it does seem to go against Google’s “be together, not the same” mentality as the watches are ultimately the same in software UX.
What this means is that Google has wider control as to how the platform will evolve: we see this with Wi-Fi, for example, as Wear devices were capable of the function out of the box but did not get the feature enabled until this latest update. In this way, through software, Google can dictate the course of hardware advancements. And if Google does not take Wear the right way themselves, the platform could stumble and be left in the dust by its strong competition. By centralizing the evolution, Google also maximizes their responsibility and sacrifices possible innovations in a segment that should be highly innovating. Holding Wear back from acquiring new software that could also accommodate new hardware is not the only thing that could be considered a misdirection by Google. The place where I see failed potential so far is Wear’s role in the Internet of Things. If we are to control our appliances with our voice or touchscreens, doing so by operating a smartwatch is intuitively more convenient than doing so with a phone. After all, a watch is attached to our wrists at all times instead of laying on a table or inside a pocket. With Wear watches’ Wi-Fi capabilities, they could also act as a remote control independently of a phone. There are plenty of DIY smartwatch home-automation remote guides out there, and most achieve this through Tasker and similar means. The results can be impressive, and some even (rightfully call it) the “Holy Grail” for Home Automation. If home automation can be made easy from your watch with a hacked-together Tasker solution, imagine how amazing it could get if the functionality was natively tied to Google’s upcoming Project Brillo developments!
Now, there is no point in doomsaying or condemning the future of the platform because of this temporary slip. But as a fan of this technology, I want its future to be bright. The platform’s UX vision is already better than that of its main competitor, but as of now it still feels rather unfocused. There are many upcoming releases that we know of be – it through hints, teases or announcements – that could refresh the hype for Wear. The Tag Heuer collaboration should be a pricey yet interesting alternative, as it is claimed to be upgradeable. The Moto 360’s second iteration will allegedly focus on customization, and most likely improve upon every aspect of its predecessor. The recent Asus Zenwatch 2 announcement did not shock us with anything except its ridiculous bezels, though, so in a sense we feel that this was a missed opportunity. As far as hardware goes, we can expect some neat additional choices before the year is up.
I have no doubt that Google will neatly integrate Wear into their Internet of Things developments – this is a no-brainer, and if they don’t do it right, our power users and developers will find a way. The question is whether they’ll do it right away, and whether they do it right. ATAP’s Project Soli could being an innovative new way of inputting commands on smartwatches, and the upcoming Wear hardware is likely to surpass our expectations. But we know Google: they tease developments that generate hype, then underwhelm us with their releases; overtime these get improved and they get us to the original vision and promises. But as Google expands their ambitions in technology and incorporates more and more platforms to their Android suite, things seem get diluted.
Last year was admittedly not the predicted “Year of Smartwatches”, and with VR and IoT picking up, wearables in general seem to be losing the hype they had a few years back. Google will not abandon Wear, and we know that great things are coming. But it is a little worrying to not see a more consolidated focus on what could have an amazing synergy with the rest of their products. I love this platform and do not want to see it fall behind the competition. Hopefully Google will reveal progressive plans for their smartwatches – that is support for new hardware sensors, new great devices, better integration with their products and all the innovation that this space needs to stay relevant and break into the mainstream. For now, I am left waiting for the sweet update that they love to tout so much.
Where do you think Google is taking Wear, and where would you want them to take it? Sound off in the comments!
We spend a lot of time on our smartphones. The older generation likes to joke that we are so focused on our phone, looking at it all the time that we are going to walk into a wall and break our nose. Well with the power of our phone and the rear facing camera, this hazard can be eliminated.
XDA Forum Member nyomidev offers up an app that uses your camera to show you what’s coming by overlaying your apps. In this video, XDA TV Producer TK reviews Iris. TK shows off the application and shares his thoughts, so check out this app review.
T-Mobile has announced that they are pushing out an OTA update to its Xperia Z3, bringing it up to Android 5.0.2 and including new features and enhancements. Once updated, build 23.1.C.0.385 will also add LTE Band 12 capability to the device, VoLTE improvements, and device stability.
When I first covered the ZenFone 2’s unveiling event, I was surprised to see such a compelling package for what seemed like such an affordable price. This, in addition to some reasons I will explain in short, led me to purchase the device, but not for myself (the phone will go to a lucky family member back in my country that I have yet to pick), and more so for XDA.
In this editorial I want to shine a light upon my background as a smartphone user, and why I chose to make this purchase (myself) when I will not be owning the device after the reviewing period.
Many of you have caught glimpses of my background through my articles or social media. I am from Argentina, which is a developing country at the southernmost corner of South America. Growing up in said country was not a cakewalk: in 2001, we had a peak in our financial crisis, a very own “Great Depression” that led the country to a default on foreign debt, massive unemployment growth, and a crippled economy that would soon pave the way to unimaginable inflation rates. This is hardly the ideal context for a kid to develop an affinity for expensive technology, but starting with a cheap Gameboy I began exploring this world of hardware and software. Sadly, it never got cheaper…
Despite being a developing market, Argentina has not been a target for the increasing trend of cheap offerings that certain OEMs are focusing on. In fact, devices like the Moto G cost several times more than they do in other countries, and several times more than they should. On the XDA office chat, I’ve shocked people by sharing images of phones at my country’s stores, with some flagships like the G3 going for close to U$S 1,500. In Argentina, most people buy Samsung devices – the low end kind with a billion words in their name. It is rare to see an expensive flagship there, particularly since many arrive late (or never) and import taxes are quite high and strict. Some phones like iPhones are seen as the ultimate coveted good.
To afford my devices in Argentina, I had to make smart use of discounts and promotions to bring down the price as much as possible. That netted me some rather good flagship phones like the S3 and the Note 3, but most people are not so lucky – in fact, I do not have a single friend in my country with a flagship from 2012 and onward. This is why I put a lot of attention to budget or affordable phones like the Moto G, which I swiftly recommend to people there. When I saw the ZenFone 2, I thought that this would be the perfect phone for people in my country. But it would also be a good chance to try to show what we at the XDA office think reviews should be all about, which is why I am investing on this device to help put our vision out there.
In the office chat, we constantly discuss about other sites’ reviews and their pros and cons, but what we mostly disagree with them on is methodology. In this sense, I want to make some things clear: the focus of the ZenFone 2 review (and the kind of reviews that we will aim for after that) will be on objective results.The review will also have an editorial and subjective section, but other than that, we intend for the meat of the review to be about the performance of the phone in comparison to other alternatives, in key areas for power users. This is particularly exciting because this phone holds in itself quite a few important developments in Android hardware: a 64-bit processor from ever-growing Intel and 4GB of RAM… and we expect that these are going to become very important (or at the very least, widespread) in the following months or years. It also touches on my personal interest for affordable technology, but I guarantee that I will compartmentalize that aspect from objective criticism, and from empiric testing as well.
We still don’t know where this review will take us. The device will arrive to me in a couple of days after which I will go forward with the methodology discussed within our team, which we want to let you in on. I want to emphasize the fact that any virtue that might come out of this methodology is a result of endless hours discussing Android within the XDA Portal Team office and learning from the great people at our forums. I also want to mention that this phone came from my own wallet, as an investment for our XDA vision, a cure to my personal curiosity and inspired by my country and our Android community – which is strongly international, and many people here know the struggle of funding this hobby in countries like mine. I am now anxiously awaiting my Amazon order to arrive. I hope that we can create a review that you will all enjoy. We all do. Last year I wouldn’t have imagined that I would be where I am today, analyzing technology with such an amazing group of people for such an amazing community… In many ways, this is a dream come true – and you, our readers, are the reason it is possible. So thank you, and know that we all value XDA more than we can say.
We also want you to be a part of this review, so we ask you this:
What do you want to know about the ZenFone 2? What do you want to see from our review? Let us know, we want to answer you!
The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact is still a decent choice for those of you looking for a smaller phone with good hardware specs and continuous firmware support. Sony has lowered the price of its phone from $549.99 to $329.99 so head over to the Sony store website to check it out!
The latest 5.1 revision for Wear brought the much needed wrist gestures and Wi-Fi support (which helps with feature parity against the competition), but the update still hasn’t fully 
Android as a platform evolved rapidly, and this was partially because of the freedom it gave OEMs when it came to experimenting with software and hardware. We saw Android phones with all sorts of innovations in these regards, but as it stands, Wear’s 
