Last Updated on April 12, 2017 by Mathew Diekhake
Nothing would be more foolish than to bash Sony at their own game because obviously Xperia owners are going to be reading this. Nonetheless, from my outside observations they annoy me at not only banging out devices in quick successions but also not making a lot of sense with the way they upgrade. lets look at the Z1, for example, that released in September of 2013. The original Z1 came with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean out of the box, and that makes perfect sense. The Xperia Z1s comes at the start of 2014 with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. Still we are looking good and on track, but here’s where it starts getting confusing. While the original Z1 see further updates to Android 4.3, 4.4, and 4.4.2 Kitkat the Z1s hasn’t seen anything at all; it is still sitting on the same 4.3 Jelly Bean.
It must be terrible sitting back and watching all of the KitKat software version roll right by and not being empowered to do anything about it. Thankful owners can get all of the goodness at once instead of starting in the beginning when the Android 4.4.4 starts rolling out.
Right now the rumor mill suggests that a new firmware namely 14.4.B.0.20 is passing through certification and will be rolling out to devices very soon. There is no official announcement when the update will commence, but when it does I will update this post with the news. Moreover, because it isn’t out yet we obviously can’t say for sure what is inside. However, we do know a lot about KitKat so lets break some of it down.
The first noticeable difference is the camera icon on the lock-screen. It is the app positioned on the bottom right side of the screen. To open it, you touch and scroll upwards and not tap it. The status bar changes all throughout Kitkat. It started mostly white with a few little color variations, but now as we head into the latter stages of Kitkat it is all white for the WiFi, signal strength and battery icons. There is a cool Emoji update that brings in lots of new Emoji from the keyboard. The keyboard receives an update in landscape mode, so it’s easier to type. There ‘re stacks of bug fixes, performance enhancements, security fixes, Easter Eggs access from tapping on the build number seven times and more. One cool feature is the new immersive mode that lets users indulge on full screen content without a status bar taking up valuable screen real estate. It has a new multi-window display feature, better battery performance, wireless printing capabilities and the UI is much faster, and smoother compared to the old jelly Bean you are currently stuck on until you get this.
We are anticipating this starting as a notification coming in OTA when it is ready. However, if you want to check in the meantime, you can always navigate to Settings -> About phone -> Software updates -> System updates.
Always backup your data using helium or Titanium from the Google Play Store before accepting any over the air download just in case you want to complete a full factory reset and wipe the data. Backup contacts or sync them with the Google account, so you don’t lose your friends numbers and store away any important baby photos you have in your gallery.