My first Android phone was Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V, and oh boy! I really loved the skin (aka Xperia UI), which was miles ahead of stock Android back then. Even after the separation from Ericsson, Sony engineers commited a bunch of codes to AOSP to improve the support for custom theming.
The Pie based skin of Xperia phones are quite close to the vanilla Android, yet there are a number of handy tweaks here and there for better user experience. For example, they can easily handle the ultra long 21:9 display in phones like Xperia 1 with clever UI element positioning.
Talking about Xperia 1, Sony’s 2019 flagship was announced in February but launched in June. The Japanese OEM integrated a stunning 4K ‘CinemaWide’ display panel with the phone, which is fueled by Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC.
The phone also features a trio of 12 MP camera sensors in the rear panel along with a side mounted fingerprint sensor. Sony released July security patches (build 55.0.A.2.314) for the dual SIM model of Xperia 1 (J9110) at the beginning of last month. Another build is now available on Sony OTA server.
As you can see, the change in the version number is pretty big: from 55.0.A.2.314 to 55.0.A.6.16. The OTA is reportedly available on Russian and Ukrainian Xperia 1 units, while some single SIM (J8110, J8170) carrier branded models are getting it as well.
Although Sony did not share a sane changelog, we can confirm that the new build comes with August security patches. It’s good to see the steady flow of updates from Sony.
As a matter of fact, Xperia 1 is not the only Sony phone to get the August update. The whole Xperia XZ2 family of phones are are reportedly getting new OTAs with up-to-date security patches.
FYI, Xperia XZ2 was the flagship series from Sony in 2018. All three phones (regular XZ2, XZ2 Premium and XZ2 Compact) are powered by Snapdragon 845 SoC, while parameters like screen size and battery capacity are making them distinct from each other.
The new update for Xperia XZ2 family is carrying the version number 52.0.A.8.131, which is another major increment from the July update (52.0.A.8.107).
Judging from the series of updates, other Sony phones will eventually receive new builds infused with August patches very soon.
PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.