Sony Ericsson (now simply Sony) revealed its upgrade plans for its Xperia range of mobile devices at the end of last year. Sony mobile communications (SMC) has now announced the start of the software update rollout for its Xperia S. This software update includes the OS upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0.4) as well as new media applications.
Included within the new media applications is Sony’s ‘Walkman’, ‘Album’ and ‘Movies’ applications. The Walkman app brings social networking integration to the Japanese firm’s signature audio technologies. According to Sony, this will enable smartphone users to share their favourite musical tracks while also discovering new music that their friends like.
By utilising the new Album app, Xperia S users will be able to sort and browse through all their high resolution photos. They can also view, like, or comment upon their friends’ photos and videos on Facebook and share their own images captured with the Xperia S’ 12 MP snapper via the social network and other cloud-based photo services.
Besides enabling Xperia users to view all their HD videos on the excellent 4.3" (720 x 1280, 342 ppi) touchscreen, the new Movies app will also perform intelligent database searches in order to obtain movie posters and info about the movies stored on your device.
Frozen OS delicacy to enhance the Xperia S user experience
Sony’s Xperia S will get a much needed software upgrade from Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) to Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), which makes some new features available to users including:
A new lock screen with improved functionality.
Resizable widgets to enable enhanced homescreen personalisation.
Improved control of users’ mobile data consumption.
Recent Apps button for clear overview of a user’s applications.
Sony stated that the update will be directly accessible from a user’s smartphone over mobile networks as well as Wi-Fi, and users also have to option of upgrading via their PC – either via Sony’s web-based Xperia Update service, or the PC Companion application. Although the rollout of the update will continue over the next few weeks, Sony did say that the direct availability thereof may vary across the different countries and their local carriers. No local release info is available yet.
All Xperia S users will get a notification when the upgrade is ready to be downloaded. The company added that the software update package weighs in at approximately 200 MB, meaning users may want to connect to a Wi-Fi network when downloading to avoid any nasty data bill surprises come month end.
In related news, last month SMC also announced two new editions to the Xperia range of smartphones, the Xperia go and Xperia acro S.
