Sony releases AOSP for the Xperia Z, news regarding Jelly Bean rollouts coming next week
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.