The Sony Xperia S might be getting its update to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean a lot sooner than expected - as early as the end of March.

A tweet from the Sony Mobile team in Germany revealed the news: "we will begin the rollout of Android [Jelly Bean] 4.1 for the Xperia S in late March." Apparently, a German user asked when the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean release would occur, and developers working on said release simply answered. Things seem to work more smoothly in Germany. The exchange occurred in German, but was translated.

Initially announced for an April rollout, the 4.1 Jelly Bean update has long been awaited. In spite of the fact that the Xperia S was one of the company's flagship smartphones in 2012, it hasn't received an update for a while.

The device first shipped with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and users have been stuck on Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich since September.

It's unclear if we'll see an international release this month, or if the tweet only refers to a German version. In either case, the Jelly Bean update is sure to get promptly uploaded to the interwebs regardless of which market it lands in first.

The timing of the release doesn't appear random. A number of competing devices have recently been pushed Android updates as well. These include The Samsung Galaxy S3, Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, Galaxy S2 and HTC One X.  Additionally, Samsung debuted the Galaxy S4 last week. The release of an Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update for the Xperia S can be interpreted as an attempt to preserve market share in the face of growing competition.

The Xperia S boasts 32GB of internal memory and a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera among its highlights. For its age, it's not a bad piece of hardware and a 4.1 Jelly Bean update should give it some added shelf life.