Just a few days after announcing that the Sony Xperia Home launcher is going into maintenance mode, the company has now posted in their Google+ Beta Community site that there is a new Xperia Home launcher in the works.
The news came from Sony’s Erika Prymus who is a member of the launcher’s development team. In a comment replying to the original post announcing the discontinuation, Erika points out that a new launcher is in the works and that is why the old version has been discontinued.
Sony Comment on Xperia Launcher
So the question becomes, why discontinue in the first place?
While the exact reason was not given, it is likely that Sony is wanting to completely rebuild the launcher from the ground up. Trying to adapt old code, especially that around UX and UI, can be challenging and it may simply be easier to build something new than to try to retrofit something old. Sony wouldn’t be the first company to do this – nor will they be the last.
Either way, as you can see from the screen capture above, the new has been well received by the Sony Xperia community. It has 27 +1’s and dozens of comments of approval of the news.
Sony probably could have done themselves a favor by announcing the discontinuing of the current launcher and the development of the new one in the same post.
There is no word on when this new Sony Xperia Home launcher is coming but given we are so close to the Android P launch, I would bet it will be with the Android P update for their various phones later this year and early next.
