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The Xperia Z3 isn’t even two years old yet, but it’s not getting Nougat

The Xperia Z3 isn’t even two years old yet, but it’s not getting Nougat

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Sony Xperia Z3

I’m tired of Sony making me look bad. I spent 3,000 words two years ago talking up the Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact and their excellent hardware design and camera sensors. Today, Sony lets both me and its loyal customers down by not including either phone in its Android Nougat upgrade plans. Now, I know Nougat isn’t any sort of life-altering update, but it does have a few niceties to it and Sony’s neglect signals a bigger issue. If the Z3 family isn’t even on Sony’s (presumably long and bumpy) upgrade roadmap for Android versions, that pretty much tells me it’s as good as dead to the Japanese company. And that’s not cool. That’s bad. Especially in a world where the freaking iPhone 5, a device released in 2012, is eligible for the latest iOS upgrade.

This is a rather cruel twist after the Z3 served as Sony's test device for the Android N dev preview. So the phone's good enough to test stuff on but apparently not important enough to update to the fully cooked Nougat software. The same fate is befalling the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact, which was launched alongside the Z3 and Z3 Compact smartphones. Just a sad day all around.