Sony Ceases Development Of Xperia Home Launcher

If you have taken a liking to Sony’s Xperia Home launcher then you will not be happy to hear that the company has made a business decision to cease development of this launcher. It’s not going to bring any new features to the Xperia Home launcher from now on and the updates that are released will only bring bug fixes.

It’s common for third-party Android smartphones to feature custom launchers. They’re paired with the custom skins that almost all OEMs slap on their Android devices. Sony has shipped the Xperia Launcher on its smartphones for quite some time now but it has now decided to stop developing it any further.

Erika Prymus, a moderator on Sony’s Xperia Home Open Beta on Google+, confirmed that the company has made a business decision to relegate the Xperia Home launcher to “maintenance phase,” what that basically means is that no new features are going to be developed for the launcher.

The updates that Sony sends out for its launcher from now on will only bring bug fixes and that for “as long as deemed necessary,” so there’s no guarantee even that the launcher will be supported for bug fixes indefinitely. This decision also results in the Xperia Home Open Beta program bring shut down.

It likely that Sony will stick with its launcher for the foreseeable future without making any improvements to it but it remains to be see if it’s planning to go the Nokia route by adopting a vanilla Android launcher instead.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Sony, xperia