Sony – Making a grave Android mistake?

Last year, Sony made some good phones. There is no doubt about it. The Xperia line up may not be getting as much hype as the Samsung’s Galaxy line up but the phones are gorgeous looking devices and have good hardware in them. I personally am impressed with Sony’s phones more than Samsung’s.

In fact to cite an example, during a family trip, I was having Samsung Galaxy Ace and my sister was using Xperia X10 mini Pro and her phone did not crash once, even when using maps and other apps, while my phone did.

Now, using Xperia S, I can say that this phone might not be in the quad core league by any margin, but unless you live and die by the four-cores this is one of the best phones to buy. Especially if one is use to taking pictures from his or her phone, this phone offers a lot.

Unfortunately though, Sony squandered any and all good things about this phone but making two mistakes.

First Mistake – they launched the phone with Android 2.3, which was already dated. This should not happen to any phone which wants to fight the big leagues. Anyways, they updated the phone eventually so this defect got overshadowed.

Second Mistake – and a bigger mistake is what Sony has done now. It has released its update schedule for its Xperia Series 2012 and it is undesirable at best. In 2012, they updated all their 2011 lineup in time and that too the complete lineup.

Unfortunately, they are leaving out many phones of the 2012 lineup, even though they are capable of getting the Jellybean update. Even their flagship phone of 2012, Xperia S is getting the update very late (even after a few of its smaller siblings). Last year, Sony improved its reputation of being most consumer friendly by supporting the modding community and quick updates.

Now, it is ruining that reputation and that too at a time when Galaxy S3 and Note 2 are shining like two stars. Other companies like HTC and LG also have in their kitty a few Jelly Bean phones.

Sony will soon release Xperia Z, a 5” phone with quad-core. The problem is how we trust they will update it when Android 5.0 is released, or Android 6.0. Will it be on time?

Sony still has time to amend these mistakes. Their commitment to their past lineup will define the success of their next lineup. There are reasons why the Nexus series sells like hot cakes. One of them is the always updated OS.

[This article has been written by Kunal Prakash]