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Sony is continuing its proven track record as “developer’s best friend” with its latest moves. The Japanese manufacturer has just announced that the Sony Xperia Z would be getting direct AOSP support. The project is being hosted on Github and is maintained by senior software engineers Johan Redestig and Björn Andersson. There are a few things to take note of, including the fact that this isn’t being treated as an entirely stable project just yet.
The project requires extra proprietary binaries from Qualcomm (provided on Github), but Sony wants to eventually get to the point where the binaries can be replaced with source. As such, developers who want to help free the project from any proprietary chains can contribute to get things working, such as source for NFC and other elements of the phone. Sony already has many other things working, such as the microSD card slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, the LED flash, and sensors. Not everything works 100%, but they’re working enough for bootable builds.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, this is only meant for developers so you’ll want to steer clear if you don’t know your way around low-level code or a source file. Head to Sony’s blog to learn more about how you can get involved.
In semi-related news, Sony has announced via Twitter that more Jelly Bean rollouts are coming soon. The company noted that the Xperia P and Xperia Go, the Xperia S, SL, acro S and ion are all in the final stages, and promised that we’d be getting more info at some point next week. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for the latest on that so be sure to stay tuned.
Wish they would take this same approach to their gaming consoles.
Every OEM should do this.
“The project requires extra proprietary binaries from Qualcomm (provided on Github), but Sony wants to eventually get to the point where the binaries can be replaced with source. As such, developers who want to help free the project from any proprietary chains can contribute to get things working, such as source for NFC and other elements of the phone. Sony already has many other things working, such as the microSD card slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, the LED flash, and sensors. Not everything works 100%, but they’re working enough for bootable builds.”
I would love to see this kind of support for Nexus devices. Source for the binaries…
At this rate, Sony devices will have more *source* support than Google’s own Nexus devices. Talk about “developer’s best friend”…
May have to re-think the whole One/X/S4 bit and take a good look at some Sony devices.
(No, I am not slamming Google or Nexus. I know the binaries are owned by Qualcomm and not open source due to licensing restrictions. I just see this article about Sony attempting to work around it and cannot help but wish Google had already lead the way..)
Which us carriers will sale the phone
If only they would launch in the US. The only carrier that might get it is AT&T and it will probably be a bastardized version of it.
Sony just became my new favorite smartphone OEM
they should set it up where you can choose OS type on purchase and INCLUDE GAPPS
how bout RELEASING THE DAMN PHONE ON A U.S. CARRIER??
Does this not reek of ‘SONY dont know how to do it, so we’ll just open it up to devs to see if they can do our work for us??’ That’s what it seems like to me!