Sony extends Marshmallow Concept trial into New Year, releases 6.0.1

Sony had been planning to bring its Sony Concept Android Marshmallow beta to a close later this week. However, the company has decided to continue the program into the New Year, following a very positive experience with testers.

The additional time is certainly good news for the tens of thousands of program participants and also means that Sony will have some additional time to collect more feedback and tweak its Marshmallow experience. There is a drawback here though, as the company doesn’t seem to know exactly when it plans to release an official Marshmallow build to its broader consumers. An update for the Z5 range had been expected in January.

However, the final release may be based on the slightly newer Android 6.0.1 version, as Sony has also just begun rollout out this software to its Concept beta testers. The new MMB29M.Z1.3021-somc version includes the 200 new emojis and “do not disturb until” tweaks, and also seems to have removed app drawer customization from Sony’s build. The OTA update should be hitting those in the trial sometime this week.

Sony says that it doesn’t know exactly when it will be giving up the concept beta just yet. Hopefully it can continue in tandem with some stable releases for Sony’s other customers.