14 DAY TRIAL // In January 2011, during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Sony Ericsson brought to the spotlight the first device in its new family of Xperia handsets powered by Android, namely the Xperia arc.
This month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company announced the introduction of three other Xperia models, the Xperia PLAY, Xperia neo and Xperia pro.
Announced first, the Xperia arc is expected to land on shelves before the rest of the family does, and those interested in learning more on it can now find the full system of arc available for download.
Xperia arc's system dump emerged over at XDA-Developers, and more info on the matter can be found on this thread on their forum.
Soon after the file became available for download, a series of applications included in it were extracted, including the new home launcher Sony Ericsson developed for the new gen Xperia devices.
Some enthusiasts already tried the launcher on the older Xperia X10, and things are said to be working pretty nicely.
Moreover, it seems that other applications, such as Photo, Clock and News widget, were also extracted and tested on the older device.
Of course, these apps would not work at their full potential on the Xperia X10, which was announced in 2009, and went on sale in early 2010, but they go along pretty well with it.
More info on the launcher, as well as a series of screenshots with it, can be found on this post on xperiax10.net.
All of the Xperia specific applications that Sony Ericsson came up with for Android can be found in the aforementioned system dump.
In related news, we learn that some Sony Ericsson officials would be in favor of allowing the rooting of their Android smartphones.
Simon Walker, head of Sony Ericsson's developer program, tweeted about it (via Engadget), saying that he is in favor, as long as things are done properly.
It remains to be seen what would Sony Ericsson's official stance on this be, and those who might hope for the company's next handsets to come unlockable bootloaders should not get their hopes too high, even if there are great chances that more developer-friendly devices would be launched soon.