Robert Triggs / Android Authority
TL;DR
Sony has quietly brought stable Android 16 to its Xperia 1 VII.
The manufacturer has beaten several other major brands to the punch with this move.
This also comes months after Sony finally offered a more respectable update policy for its flagship phones.
Sony doesn’t have the best reputation for software updates, as it has long offered terrible update policies for its phones. That changed with the Xperia 1 VII earlier this year, and now there’s more good news. The 2025 flagship has just received the stable Android 16 update.
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Redditors reported that their Xperia 1 VII phones were indeed getting the stable Android 16 update. The update is roughly 1.1GB and has version number 71.1.A.2.68. It doesn’t seem like Sony is offering a changelog, though.
Nevertheless, this news means Sony has beaten many rival brands to releasing the stable Android 16 update. This includes OPPO, OnePlus, Xiaomi, vivo, and HONOR. In fact, it also comes a couple of days after Samsung pushed out Android 16 to the Galaxy S25 series.
We hope this is a sign of things to come for the Japanese manufacturer and that it doesn’t delay in bringing Android 16 to older flagships and mid-range devices. It also comes after Sony promised that the Xperia 1 VII would receive four major OS upgrades and six years of security patches.
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