Recently, Sony announced that it would upgrade some of its Z2-series devices, as well as the more recent Z3-series smartphones and tablet, to Android 5.0 Lollipop. The devices that were supposed to receive the Lollipop upgrade were the Xperia Z2, Xperia Z2 Tablet, Xperia Z3, Xperia Z3 Compact and Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact.
Today, Sony will begin the rollout for the Xperia Z3, Z3 Compact and Z3 Tablet Compact. However, the timing and availability may differ depending on the market or the carrier. Sony announced that the lower-end Xperia T2 Ultra and Xperia C3 will also receive the Android 5.0 upgrade.
From the looks of it, Sony's recent upgrade, which is heavily inspired by Google's new "material design" guidelines, looks even more like the stock version of Android than the previous Sony custom UI did. In fact, it's probably the closest stock-like custom UI for post-Lollipop devices, which should be a major benefit to some Android smartphone customers. Although Sony seems to have added its own implementations in some places, the design has remained minimalistic and modern.
One area where the company improved Google's software is in making it easier to move applications from local storage to the SD card. Google isn't a big fan of SD cards, as we've seen with the Nexus devices over the past few years, but most other devices out there still have them. Many low-end devices don't have much room left on the internal storage, which makes the SD card expansion necessary.
Sony also incorporated Lollipop's multi-user features, which allows multiple family members to use the same device. That may not happen too often with a smartphone, but tablets are often used by multiple people. Lollipop's multi-user accounts makes it easy for everyone to have their own accounts and switch seamlessly between them.
Last month, Google announced the "Android for Work" program that can help users create work profiles that isolate and protect work data. IT admins can then install approved applications but not have access to users' personal applications. Sony supports this program across all of its Lollipop devices, including all the ones being upgraded.
The company will share more information about what other devices will receive the Android 5.0 upgrade soon.
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