Good news this morning for those of you who have the Sony Xperia XZ or the Xperia X Performance. Sony has released the Android Nougat 7.1.1 update for both of these phones and it is already rolling out to users. The updated build is 41.2.A.2.199 for both devices and along with the improvements that come with 7.1.1, the April Android Security patch is also in this build.
The big change with 7.1.1 is the support for app shortcuts. This allows you to long press an icon and be able to get to a particular part of an app (for example, in Gmail you can tap-and-hold to start composing an email in a particular account). The problem is that the Sony launcher doesn’t support app shortcuts, at least not yet. If you are using a launcher that does support them on either of these phones (like Nova Launcher), then you will get to use the new feature. Also, the 7.1.1 update brings Unicode v9 emoji to these devices.
The update should take about 15-20 minutes to download and install and given that it is a few hundred megabytes, it’s recommend that you download it over Wi-Fi. You will need to reboot your
Sony Xperia XZ
phone after the install is complete.
Keep in mind that this update to Android Nougat 7.1.1 is only for the unlocked variants of the Xperia XZ and the X Performance. Here in the US, that is how they were sold so that should be much of a show stopper for most. If you are in other countries however where they are carrier locked, you’ll have to wait a bit longer for the update.
