With the Xperia X starting to get into customer hands in Europe – with the US and Canada rollout right around the bend – new details are beginning to surface about Sony’s 2016 fleet. One such tidbit is the lack of Small Apps across the entire Xperia X line which acted as widgets on your home screen. They included the ability to easily access a calculator or timer without fully launching an app.

 Despite being a core part of the firmware for a while, it appears Sony has had a change of heart when it comes to the usefulness of Small Apps.

The feature is nowhere to be found in the Sony Xperia X and neither is there any option to bring it back. For all intents and purposes, it looks like Sony has killed it off and will not appear in future models. This has also been confirmed in the official Sony Mobile Talk forums 

In some way, I’m not too surprised by this move. In late March, Sony also announced the end of SensMe from the Music App due in part to of its low, 3% adoption rate. Between some form of internal data from Sony about its usage and Multiview capabilities coming via Android (it’s Nutella, right?), it’s likely that it simply wasn’t something that a majority of users were putting to use or was worth investing further money into if Google was bringing a similar native solution.

Now whenever I say a majority, I get flack from people who were using a certain feature and take it personally that I’m for that option getting axed. Instead, it’s to simply point out that just because you and I find something useful, it doesn’t mean that the rest of consumers agree. However for a company like Sony, getting rid of features is a bit more tricky than say Samsung who enjoys a much larger consumer base where alienating a small portion of them won’t likely impact their bottom line. In the case of Sony, sales are so low that it’s hard to determine where their loyal users end and typical consumers come in. Still, I tend to think in this case that the more Sony can focus on its hardware and less on software which in turn would give greater emphasis to a stock Android experience, the better it is for Sony.

At their core, Sony has never been strong in software and if they rely on Google to do most of that work, not only does it mean a faster turnaround time for new builds of Android , but lower R&D costs as well.

Discuss:

Did you use the Small Apps feature on your Xperia device?

[Via XperiaBlog]