Sony has announced that they’ll be trimming up support for several software features on their phones going forward, starting with the Xperia 5. The default email app is going away, and Sony’s nixing a photo gallery feature and their software support email. This likely has to do with Sony trying to re-focus their mobile division to be more successful going forward.
Sony tightens its focus
The email app is probably the biggest change here, although it might not be a huge deal to everyone. From the Xperia 5 and forward that app won’t be available to download on the Play Store, and users will instead have to use a third-party email app or, of course, Gmail. I imagine Sony sees significantly more usage in the Gmail app than their own mail app, so why bother wasting the resources?
Sony will also stop sending out emails for software updates on their devices. With most phones getting notification prompts when updates are available these days, it really didn’t make sense to have a separate email telling them to update their device. We probably won’t miss this one.
Lastly, the gallery app on Xperia phones is losing the ability to backup to Amazon cloud storage. To access your photos, you’ll have to use the Amazon Photos app instead. This one sounds like maybe it came from Amazon instead of Sony, but regardless, the feature’s getting buried on March 31st, 2020. Your photos are safe, so get ready to use a new app or stop uploading to Amazon.