The Xperia XZ3 is a flagship from Sony, arrived in August, 2018 with pre-installed Android 9 Pie. It was the first flagship running on Android 9 Pie out of the box. The flagship is powered by Snapdragon 845 chipset and sports 6 inch display. The Android 10 update is the next major upgrade for Xperia XZ3 users.
The official edition of Android 10 came on September 3rd for Pixel series and Essential devices. Before that Google released six betas for Pixel devices and also some partner devices received some betas. The Xperia XZ3 also received the early Beta of Android 10 released by Google, as part of rollout of Beta to partner devices. However, the beta builds contain lots of bugs, according to users. So XZ3 users are waiting for the official rollout of Android 10 from Sony.
Android 10 Release Dates for Xperia XZ3
Recently, a Japanese carrier, NTT DoCoMo confirmed that Xperia XZ3 is going to receive the Android 10 update along with other 2019 flagships, but the rollout schedule hasn’t revealed. But we can estimate the probable rollout dates based on the previous rollouts of Sony.
Earlier, the Android 9 Pie update is released for Xperia XZ1, the second generation predecessor of XZ3, on November 12th, so the Japanese tech giant took nearly 97 days to begin the rollout after the official release of Android 9 Pie. However, this time, Sony should develop the Android 10 quickly for XZ3 because of Project Treble, the device already got beta builds and other optimizations.
But, recently Sony announced officially in their blog that they will rollout the Android 10 update only for Xperia 1 and 5 in this year and the remaining devices including XZ3 are scheduled for early-2020. So it seems that the Japanese tech giant gets slow with the Android 10 update.
We expect that the XZ3 would be the next device to receive the update after Xperia 1 and 5. So the rollout for XZ3 may begin in January 2020 at least in Japan and Nordic countries. The rollout might be expended to the US and India in Februrary 2020. We will post the official rollout dates here, as soon as Sony has announced them.
Android 10 Exclusive Features
The tenth anniversary update of Android came with many exciting new feature and major UI revamp. Now we will roundup some of the key changes in Android 10 update.
Gesture navigation got refined with more gestures and total removal of navbar. So XZ3 users have to use gestures only to navigate around the Android after updating to 10. However, if the user don’t like the new navigation, he can easily revert back to old navigation styles with Home, Back and Overview buttons. Back Gesture sensitivity can be adjusted in Android 10.
System-wide Dark Mode is another notable feature of the latest android update. So XZ3 users can enable the dark mode by going into Settings > Display > Theme or simply enable the battery saver to reduce eye strain and also improve battery life significantly, since the XZ3 sports OLED display. The feature automatically enables dark theme in third-party apps, so users don’t have to enable it manually.
Focus mode and Parental controls are the new additions to Digital Wellbeing in Android 10. Using Focus mode, users can stop notifications temporarily and concentrate on work on smart phone or watch a video without interruptions. Parental controls are helpful to prevent smartphone addiction in children. Users can limit screen-on time, specific app usage time with this component.
Smart Reply
Smart reply is one of the AI-powered features in Android 10. When the user receives a message, Android will analyse it using on-device machine learning and shows appropriate quick replies or action bubbles below the message. So user can send a reply with a single click only.
For example, when a user receives a text message containing address to a location, then a shortcut to launch Maps app will appear below the message in the notification. So user can navigate to that address with just a single tap without any cumbersome procedures.
Support for Desktop mode
Native support for Desktop mode is another key feature of this update. The XZ3 users can connect to their devices to Monitors or TVs with a cable and use like a PC using Desktop mode and a third party launcher. However, the feature is still experimental and will get refined in upcoming updates.
Battery saver schedule
Google introduced the battery saver feature with the Android 5 Lollipop in 2014 and refined it a lot in the last few years. Now with the Android 10, the Search giant integrated AI with Battery saver. By selecting the option of Based on your routine in Battery saver schedule of Battery section in Settings Menu, users can forget totally about battery saver manually.
The feature analyse the charging and usage patterns of the user by on-device machine learning and turn-on and off the saver automatically, according to user’s behaviour.
Support for TLS 1.3
TLS (Transport Layer Security) 1.3 is a new security protocol over which a web app or browser communicates with its home server. The new protocol is more safe and fast because of implementation of stronger cipher suites and zero-roundtrip-time feature.
Because of Zero Roundtrip Time, the app makes fewer handshakes with its server and this reduces latency considerably, leading to quick response to user. The Xperia XZ3 users need not enable the feature after getting updated to Android 10 as it is enabled by default.
Update on 23/11/2019 :
The Japanese tech giant officially revealed in a blog post that only two of its flagships will receive the Android 10 update in this year. Other flagships including Xperia XZ3, XZ2, XZ2 Compact, XZ2 Premium and Xperia 10, 10 Plus will receive the update in early 2020 only.
So it seems that the rollout of the tenth anniversary update is going to be delayed compared to the previous Pie rollout, despite of Project Treble and early betas for XZ3. We expect that the XZ3 owners will receive the update in early-January 2020 atleast in some regions like Japan, Baltic and Nordic countries. However, the rollout dates may differ depending on carriers and unforeseen technical issues.
We will update this post soon with more details about Android 10 update for Xperia XZ3. So please bookmark this page and keep visiting to know about latest news about Android 10.
