A few months ago, we wrote about the Sony Xperia S being involved in a project
that entailed supporting it with direct AOSP support. The project was
exciting, as the only other non Nexus device to have ever received such
support was the Motorola Xoom. The good news is that good progress was
made. The bad news is that it ran into some hiccups, which have led to
the Xperia S leaving the AOSP project. So much for a non Nexus stock Sony headset folks.
According to reports,
Android was booting up, Wi-Fi was working, and sensors were all up and
running. The problem was due to proprietary software binaries that could
not be merged in AOSP due to reliance on legitimate open source code,
which in the end kept audio and network functionality from working.
Google and Sony then decided that the project could not go any farther
because of this, and have moved the remains of the project over to
GitHub.
That doesn’t mean it’s entirely over
though. Sony is reportedly attempting to get those binaries opened, but
chip makers will have to give the green light before this can happen.
Sony’s goal is to get Jelly Bean 4.2
running on the Xperia S in order to use it as a development platform
for further devices in the future. I think the idea is great, but it
seems it will be more complicated than expected.
I hope that Sony and Google can find a
way to continue this project, and you’re an uber coder/engineer that
would like to examine the progress that was made, you can head over to
examine it in Github here.
