April 17, 2015 at 11:05Overview of Android 5.0 for Xperia
Many owners of the Xperia Z3, Z3 Compact and Z3 Tablet Compact have already delivered the long-awaited update on their devices, but those who doubt and retrograde continue to get lost in doubt and do not dare to click on the coveted button. It was for them that we prepared a small review of the innovations that appeared in firmware 23.1.A.0.690.
The upgrade process takes approximately 20 minutes, including downloading, installing and configuring. To install the new firmware, you need to connect the device to the computer via USB and use the program Sony Bridge (Mac) or Sony PC Companion (Windows).
Let's start with the first thing the user sees - from the lock screen. Its design has become more concise, the buttons to launch the camera and phone have moved to the very bottom of the screen and become much smaller. To unblock, as before, just swipe your finger up the screen (or down to display notifications without unlocking), but the "magic" effect with asterisks that accompanied this process in older versions of the firmware has now disappeared. Notifications on the lock screen are displayed in the order of receipt, however, in the settings you can specify priority applications, messages from which will be shown in the first place. To go to the message, just hold your finger on the desired notification, and you can remove it from the eyes out of sight by moving it to the left. Of course, the appearance of notifications can be regulated or completely prohibited. By the way the notification settings after the update are reset and it will take several minutes to choose which applications can send them again. Well, it’s not out of place to note that now (provided that the Walkman application is running), the cover of the album that is currently playing is displayed on the lock screen.
The interface has been redesigned in accordance with the concept of Material Design, this applies to the layout of the interface, fonts, colors, animations, and all other elements that you can see on the screen. At the same time, Sony designers were able to maintain the overall style characteristic of the Xperia shell. In general, everything remained in its place and the user, accustomed to the Quartet, will not feel any inconvenience.
Serious changes have touched the top "curtain" with notifications and quick settings, now it consists of several tabs that are pushed out gradually, as you move your finger. First, a plate appears with Google’s dynamic prompts - weather, travel time to home / work, a playable track and other useful information, then unnoticed notifications follow (you can delete them by swiping or by clicking on a special button that closes everything at once), and get Before quick settings and additional information, you can pull the curtain again. The design of the icons has changed slightly in accordance with the general style, and the quick brightness adjustment is now made as a separate slider and does not require a button press.
Applications can again be moved to the SD-card, as in the good old days! To do this, just go to the settings, find the “applications” item there and click the corresponding button in the properties of the application that needs to be migrated. There were no problems with the operation of applications after the transfer, at least in our case.
Switching between running applications now looks like an animated file cabinet with smooth scrolling of windows. You can close everything using the corresponding button in the upper right corner of the screen. The shell still runs smoothly and quickly without any delay. A slight slowdown can occur in the first minutes after updating and restarting and is associated with auto-tuning of the system and optimization of applications.
Guest mode allows you to use multiple Google accounts with different settings and sets of applications on the same device. This can be useful both for family tablets and for working smartphones that are used by several people.
The upgrade process takes approximately 20 minutes, including downloading, installing and configuring. To install the new firmware, you need to connect the device to the computer via USB and use the program Sony Bridge (Mac) or Sony PC Companion (Windows).
Let's start with the first thing the user sees - from the lock screen. Its design has become more concise, the buttons to launch the camera and phone have moved to the very bottom of the screen and become much smaller. To unblock, as before, just swipe your finger up the screen (or down to display notifications without unlocking), but the "magic" effect with asterisks that accompanied this process in older versions of the firmware has now disappeared. Notifications on the lock screen are displayed in the order of receipt, however, in the settings you can specify priority applications, messages from which will be shown in the first place. To go to the message, just hold your finger on the desired notification, and you can remove it from the eyes out of sight by moving it to the left. Of course, the appearance of notifications can be regulated or completely prohibited. By the way the notification settings after the update are reset and it will take several minutes to choose which applications can send them again. Well, it’s not out of place to note that now (provided that the Walkman application is running), the cover of the album that is currently playing is displayed on the lock screen.
The interface has been redesigned in accordance with the concept of Material Design, this applies to the layout of the interface, fonts, colors, animations, and all other elements that you can see on the screen. At the same time, Sony designers were able to maintain the overall style characteristic of the Xperia shell. In general, everything remained in its place and the user, accustomed to the Quartet, will not feel any inconvenience.
Serious changes have touched the top "curtain" with notifications and quick settings, now it consists of several tabs that are pushed out gradually, as you move your finger. First, a plate appears with Google’s dynamic prompts - weather, travel time to home / work, a playable track and other useful information, then unnoticed notifications follow (you can delete them by swiping or by clicking on a special button that closes everything at once), and get Before quick settings and additional information, you can pull the curtain again. The design of the icons has changed slightly in accordance with the general style, and the quick brightness adjustment is now made as a separate slider and does not require a button press.
Applications can again be moved to the SD-card, as in the good old days! To do this, just go to the settings, find the “applications” item there and click the corresponding button in the properties of the application that needs to be migrated. There were no problems with the operation of applications after the transfer, at least in our case.
Switching between running applications now looks like an animated file cabinet with smooth scrolling of windows. You can close everything using the corresponding button in the upper right corner of the screen. The shell still runs smoothly and quickly without any delay. A slight slowdown can occur in the first minutes after updating and restarting and is associated with auto-tuning of the system and optimization of applications.
Guest mode allows you to use multiple Google accounts with different settings and sets of applications on the same device. This can be useful both for family tablets and for working smartphones that are used by several people.