Earlier this year, Sony launched the "Concept for Android" initiative, which included a cleaner version of Android 5.1 compared to the UI used in Sony's shipping devices, as well as the company's most popular features and apps that users loved. Sony received positive feedback for this initiative, in which only 500 Xperia Z3 users could participate, and it has updated the project to the latest version of Android 6.0 ("Marshmallow").
The new update will roll out over the next two weeks to up to 10,000 Xperia Z3 and Xperia Z3 Compact users in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany.
Sony said that the updated "Concept for Android" software is built on some key feedback it got from its users in the first part of the program. The main goals of the project were to achieve prolonged battery life, smooth and fast performance, and a sleeker user interface.
Sony hopes that this new process will help it bring the latest version of Android faster to its customers, while also giving them the features they want to see most.
Instead of pushing the update directly to all of its customers, which may cause some problems for some, especially this early in its development (Google has just made the final "Marshmallow" AOSP version public, although Sony likely had early access to it), Sony is giving it to a subset of its customers. It's a chance for those who want the update the most to try it out first, and then tell the company what they think about it.
This gives these users the opportunity to have more direct contact with Sony and a greater influence on the changes Sony should make, and it also ensures a better experience for everyone else once it's rolled out to all of the devices that are supposed to get Android 6.0.
If you want to be part of Sony's Concept for Android program, you can sign up through Sony's app. The access will be granted to the first 10,000 users who sign up, and they will be notified about it over the next few weeks.
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