topic Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment in XPERIA archive

Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

legend43 — Sat, 25 May 2013 05:45:05 GMT

After a horrid experience with Samsung with my S2, I never wanted to buy a samsung again. Against a lot of advices, I chose the Xperia Ion over the S3, Lumia, HTC One and from day one I have been throughly disappointed. The battery life on the first recharge of over 8 hours was about 7 hours!

Being an android app developer, I tried the following:

1. Turned off GPS & Wifi

2. Turned off both 2G and 3G

3. Lowered screen brightness to about 10% (trust me, I can barely read it)

4. Turned off screen rotation

5. Turned off live wallpapers

6. Installed Battery doctor (to monitor and get detailed stats of the battery)

The battery life remained about 6-10 hours (with ALL of the above turned off!)

The Sony service centre first told me that this is due to the instrument being shelfed too long and after 2 months of charging everyday it will be fine.

I bought the phone in the last week of Jan and it's the last week of May right now. Still no improvement.

When I checked back with the service centre (since April) they told me that a jellybean update will be out very soon to fix the battery issue and it is common with Xperia Ion to give such a poor battery life.

I'm really fed up of waiting for the update. Even the smallest phone brands offer Jellybean but not Sony. Considering Ion is the second top phone they have. I need a replacement of the faulty handset, not just the battery.

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

legend43 — Sat, 25 May 2013 05:47:02 GMT

Oh I would also like to add that in Developer options I set that there are not more than 2 background applications running... Just to keep the phone memory clean from multiple apps eating the battery life.

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

cheekyb71 — Sun, 26 May 2013 08:11:35 GMT

I purchased my Ion on the 4th July 2012 for a dealership in Hong Kong and the issues with it have become incrementally worse, to the point where I woke up yeterday morning to a message saying "process.android is not working."

I noticed the overheating issues first - after using the phone for 10 minutes it becomes too hot to hold and will 98% of the time will "hang" and close whatever application I'm using and return to the home screen BECAUSE IT'S TOO HOT (Sony claim the running temperature is normal at 55 degrees - bullshit). It also has a habit of randomly opening and closing various apps of its own accord (it'll cycle eg facebook-camera-news-weather-whatsapp-facebook-game1-game2-homescreen-camera-album) and will continue to do this untill I force a restart.

It also has a nasty habit of overheating and draining the battery while in my handbag (when I'm obviously not using it and the apps are switched off) and will consume 100% battery within 3 hours - even with normal use (which is going to work, sitting in my bag all day, going home and checking email and facebook for maybe an hour when I get home) the battery only lasts 10-12 hours. The only way I've found to extend the battery life is to put it in flight mode, and frankly a phone that only works in flight mode is feckin useless!!

It is currently in at one of the Hong Kong service centres for its 5th factory reset, and I'm sure they'll tell me AGAIN that there's nothing wrong with it.

And I'm in the unfortunate position where the store that sold it to me isn't responsible for the warranty, yet they assured me it was a "full warranty", but they printed the warranty conditions in Chinese, which I can't read. Sony informed me yesterday that the warranty is for repair only and does not cover manufacture or software faults.

I'm buying a Samsung S3 next paycheck I think - at least their customer service seems to be better!!

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

Rickard — Wed, 29 May 2013 09:34:04 GMT

If you're not using your phone much it sounds like there might be a problem with your phone/battery or possibly an installed app if the battery doesn't last longer.

I recommend that you first disable all developer options and remove any task killer you might have. Killing processes will in most cases use more battery as your phone will have to restart them all the time. This uses more battery then having them in the memory.

If you still have this high battery usage, charge the phone to 100%, use it as you normally do and when you get an alert about low battery, go to Settings -> Battery and take a screenshot of the usage. Also tap the graph and take a screenshot of this menu.

@cheekyb71

I would recommend that you contact your local Sony Xperia support (http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/support/contact-us/) if you still have this problem after having the phone sent to service 5 times.

What will happen if the phone should overheat is that you get a message on the screen saying so and then the phone turns itself off (the phone has overheat protection). It will not cause the problems you're describing.

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

cheekyb71 — Wed, 29 May 2013 13:20:47 GMT

Thanks for the response Rickard!!

I've never had a message on the screen telling me my phone was hot - you know how I know when it's too hot?? When it burns my hand!!!!! Actually have dropped it on multiple occasions because I've had a fright.

It's only been in to the service centre twice, they advised me to try factory resetting it whenever there was a problem - and resetting everything all the time became frustrating fast!!

This time they kept my phone for 2 days and performed resetting and upgrading the software and claim the "problem is solved now". I haven't had as many issues this week as normal, but I'm holding my breath because I know it's coming! Interestingly they've done something to the sd card access - my album only has 716 photos yet my sd card is holding over 1700... I simply can't access them in the album, which is frustrating cos I've just come back from holiday!

I'm still buying a Samsung, I'm permanently relocating back to New Zealand in 6 weeks and when I was home at Christmas having problems the people in the Sony store had never even seen this phone before - I'll never be able to have it fixed there!!!

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

legend43 — Thu, 30 May 2013 15:58:44 GMT

Hi Rickard, I did the following:

1. Disabled all developer options

2. Uninstalled Battery Doctor

3. Switched off phone and charged to 100%

4. Switched on phone and plugged in charger, it was 96% and then recharged to 100% again

(The features I mentioned on my earlier post are still disabled)

5. Took the screenshot:

6. Used phone quite sparingly - About 43 mins of phone calls, no 3G or 2G used, Wifi used for about 3 to 5 mins (just to populate email)

7. Low battery alert came when I was driving so I had to take a screenshot later, nevertheless:

Since the voice calls is the maximum usage at 40%, I took a screenshot to show the actual usage (~43 mins):

The phone reached 1% about 40 mins later, which means the battery lasted about 10 1/2 hours.

What I did all day to get this performance:

43 Mins of voice calls

20 mins of music, using the headphone supplied with the phone and screen off

5 mins of Wifi to download my email, since there was just one new email and I didnt even read it I think it's safe to just ignore it.

Please advise... 10 1/2 hours is one of the BEST battery life I have got from it. To add to this, it gets very hot when I charge the phone (so hot, I can't put it in my pocket for a while!)

I'm utterly disappointed... I miss the old days of quality like Nokia and I hate them for not having Android phones.

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

cheekyb71 — Fri, 31 May 2013 05:54:08 GMT

Well I can let go of my breath now - I woke up this morning to discover that my alarm hadn't gone off, when I picked up my phone to see why I saw it was up to its old tricks, cycling through random apps. Even the power button wouldn't work, so I had to force a reboot. This means I'll be without my phone for the second consecutive weekend while Sony muck around with it and don't do anything!

I'M BLOODY SICK OF THIS PIECE OF C-R-A P PHONE!!!!

BTW @legend43 10.5 hours battery is really good!! Some days I don't even get 3 hours from mine - with 0 minutes calling, 0 minutes wifi, and 0 minutes music! I've actually never been able to listen to music on this phone because of it's terrible battery life - and that's WHY I brought this phone!!

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

anunnaki — Fri, 31 May 2013 06:02:25 GMT

that's strange. Your phone must be faulty. I'm able to watch movies on youtube with wi-fi on for at least 4-4,5hours to deplete battery from 100% to say 15%

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

san_dod — Fri, 31 May 2013 06:27:35 GMT

Hi,

I am using Xperia ION since last 5 months. There is one severe problem in my phone. My phone always shows 1% battery. When i try to charge the phone, the battery reaches gradually 100% but once again it reaches to 1% as soon as I disconnect the charger from phone.

Can anybody help me in this case?

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

cheekyb71 — Fri, 31 May 2013 07:17:29 GMT

Ironically anunnaki that is exactly our point! Our phones are faulty; Sony won't acknowledge there is a problem and will not do anything about it! I spent $4998 Hong Kong dollars for something I can't even use as a paperweight because it's actually too hot - it'd probably start a fire!!!!!!!

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

anunnaki — Fri, 31 May 2013 07:42:05 GMT

sorry to hear that

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

Rickard — Fri, 31 May 2013 07:53:35 GMT

That doesn't look normal...

Perhaps your battery needs to be replaced but before you contact a service location, try repairing the phones software in PC Companion if you haven't tried that already just to make sure this is not software related.

Re: Xperia Ion - overall disappointment

Rickard — Fri, 31 May 2013 07:56:27 GMT

If your phone drains the battery that fast or gets very hot that without it turning itself off there's a hardware problem in it. Please contact your local Sony Xperia support (http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/support/contact-us/) if you haven't got this fixed by the service location.