Over the weekend, we learned that the Sony Xperia S was named as the target of an "experiment" thanks to Google's own Jean-Baptiste Queru that'd see the handset gain support from the Android Open Source Project. At the time, many were wondering how Sony Mobile would react to the news, and now it appears that we've got the answer to that question. Speaking to Android Central, Sony said that it "encourages and supports external innovation and the openness that Android brings." The company went on to say that, despite the fact that the project is going on outside of Sony Mobile, it plans to keep an eye on the experiment in order to see if there's anything that it can contribute during the process.

It remains to be seen exactly when or if this project will move from something that's useful only for "low-level engineering" to software that Xperia S owners can actually use on a regular basis, but it's still great to see Sony getting behind the work like this. The experiment is still in its early days, with discussion currently focused on things like kernels, but so far things seem to be going well. If you're interested in following along with the project yourself, you can find the Google Group dedicated to it right here. 

Via Android Central