Owners of Sony’s Xperia Z2 and Z3 range of devices can rejoice, as Android 5.0 Lollipop is now available to Australian owners of the Xperia Z3 on Optus and Vodafone (though it seems Telstra hasn’t finalised it yet). Better news is that Sony is pushing out an update to Android 5.0.2 that runs on these devices with a number of fixes designed to improve the experience even further.
Sony has told Ausdroid that the update includes the following features:
- Ensured the lock screen / notification bar doesn’t indicate “no service” when the device has coverage
- Added a Sony feature; bringing back the “close-all-button” in the activity menu, so you can easily close all apps at once
- Unblocked devices with server policies (such as Exchange Active Sync for e-mail), to enable the new Lollipop lock-screen notifications
- Ensured the LED light is lit across all sound modes – and no longer offset by “silent”
- Made the necessary fixes to enable the easy movement of content from internal memory to external microSD card (something we saw affecting a few devices)
- Improved messaging functionality in Ultra stamina mode – some conversations could not be opened before in Ultra stamina mode
The update will be available via OTA updates soon, but for those who don’t want to wait, you can grab XperiaFirm and FlashTool and download the updates and apply them to your phone immediately. It takes a bit of stepping through, but you can apply the updates without wiping your handset, and they’ll work as good as new.
The full list of supported, updated devices is as follows:
- Xperia Z3
- Xperia Z3 Compact
- Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact
- Xperia Z2
- Xperia Z2 Tablet
Update: It looks as if Telstra has received the update from Sony and it’s scheduled for release in just over a week, on 18 May 2015:
