Micromax Testing Android 4.3 With Canvas HD Update Coming Soon

Micromax has been lambasted by consumers in the past for not following up with software updates for their devices. That might change soon. A tweet by regular @MMXNewscaster reveals an image of the Canvas HD A116 running the recently revealed Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. If true, this would please all Micromax consumers. At its Canvas 4 launch event, Micromax focused on the importance of consumer satisfaction and introduced the 7-day service center policy to improve its service. Providing regular software updates should be the next step forward for the company if it wants to really establish itself as a brand that can compete with the big players. We expect the Android 4.3 update for the Canvas 4 after the Canvas HD update is rolled out. If we talk about Android 4.3 itself, the new operating system will feature multi-user restricted profiles. This will let users control access to contents and apps per user—so parents, for example, can control which applications their kids can access. When accessed from restricted profiles, applications behave differently. On stage, Hugo Barra demonstrated this by showing a puzzle game whose in-app purchase functionality was automatically disabled when it was accessed on the kid’s restricted profile. Other features include built-in OpenGL ES 3.0 support, DRM APIs for providing hardware-based encryption for protecting content, which will allow it to provide 1080p video to its tablets. The first partner is Netflix, which supports 1080p HD streaming. The Nexus 7 is the first device to support it. Android 4.3 also introduces many other features, including support for Bluetooth Smart devices, background Wi-Fi location, more language support and “easier text input.” The Micromax Canvas HD sports a 5 inch HD display with a screen resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels backed by a MediaTek’s MT6589 Cortex-A7 SoC quad-core processor clocked at 1.2 GHz. The Canvas HD launched with Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 operating system.

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Sony Announces Android 4.3 Update For Select Xperia Devices

Sony Mobile officially confirmed the upcoming availability of the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system for some of its latest Xperia smartphones out there, including the Xperia Z and Xperia Z Ultra. A post on the company’s blog says it is “already getting stuck in” and is working to develop updates for the Xperia Z, Xperia ZL, Xperia ZR, Xperia Tablet Z, Xperia SP and Xperia Z Ultra. Some older Xperia phones running Android 4.1 are still under examination. There’s a possibility that at least some of them will be updated straight to Android 4.3, but no names have been confirmed yet. Sony, however, is not known for being quick with Android rollouts so customers will probably need to be patient once again. Back in December 2012, the company promised Android 4.2 updates for 10 of its 2012 Xperia range, and that process was only completed last month. It admits that the Android 4.1 upgrade “process hasn’t been as succinct or as timely as you might’ve expected”, which leads us to believe that this may happen once again with the roll-out of the third Jelly Bean iteration. With Android 4.3, many of the updates appear to be under the hood. Among the front-end changes is the addition of a Multi-User Restricted Profiles feature. Sony posted a video of the Xperia Tablet Z already running the AOSP version of Android 4.3, as they previously did with 4.2.

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