topic Re: Overall impressions in XPERIA archive

Overall impressions

Fallforth — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 11:07:33 GMT

Hello All!

I just want to express my personal experiece with my first Xperia smartphone.

Being a former owner of Sony Ericsson's wt19i Live With Walkman (a great smartphone with almost no faults and really nice sound both with internal speakers and headphones) I wanted to keep up to date with the new technology so I made my research and decided to buy the Black Xperia SP smartphone as it best fits my requirements as a smart phone user.

To me Sony has always been a symbol of perfection and high quality as I have always trusted the brand when it comes to TVs, Stereo Systems and Car Audio. Little did I know I would be disappointed by the smartphone.

When I opened the box of my brand new Xperia SP the design of the phone grabbed me at once. It felt nice in the hand - not too big, not too small.

Call me a perfectionist, but I though Sony is all about perfection! Well, it didn't turn out this way. As I got a closer look of the phone I immediately noticed that there were a couple of flaws (I know that the phone is not hand but factory made, but those shouldn’t be there anyway).There were dots on the metal frame surrounding the glass making the paint job on it look unsmoothand really cheap - and I had just opened the box. Inserting the headset a couple of times made things worse since the metal jack quickly peeled of the dark grey paint around the sharp edges where the 3.5mm jack goes into the phone. The plastic back cover feels floppy every time I touch it. Not to mention that the glass covering the 4.6 inch display looks and feels a bit misplaced in the metal frame meaning that the right edge of the frame is sharper and more tangible than the left edge. I swallowed the big lump in my throat and turned on the phone.

A nice bright display with vibrant colours and crisp images made me smile, but my joy was shortlived as I noticed that the screen underneath the glass was again a bit misplaced having a visible black gap between the top end of the last row of pixels and the the black painted frame in the glass above it. No such gap at the bottom made me feel that the phone is miles away from perfection.

I quickly forgot about the flaws and had a blast discovering the possibilities of the smartphone until I had to charge the battery.

Yes, I had the problem with the multitouch of the touchscreen not working well or misbehaving when the phone was charging and especially placed on a flat surface. There it was!The flaw that made me go to the dealer the next day and demand a replacement.

When I got the replacemet - a brand new unopened box of Xperia SP - I opened it infront of the dealer and noticed the same flaws as I mentioned above with the dots on the metal frame and the misplacing of the glass and screen underneath with gaps not only to the upper part, but to the right end of the screen as well. And guess what it also had the problem with the misbehaving touchscreen when charging. And yes Dear Support Team I was using the original chargers that both phones came with. I was offered to chose anothe model but I refused thinking that every problem has a solution. And I was right. One of the dealers offered to try another Sony charger on both Xperia SPs and see if the problem persists since a previous experience of his has shown that sometimes voltage issues with chargers cause problems. Worked as a charm! The charger came from Xperia J. It turned out that both Xperia SP chargers were faulty - working but not as they should (not providing the proper voltage which made the touchscreen go crazy) - and a weird remark that I made was that the SPs chargers had the Sony logo engraved on them but the Sony Ericsson Logo where the voltage and the other stuff is described and the Xperia J’s charger had Sony logo not only engraved but also printed on the part of the charger where all the information about voltage etc. is described. So people facing this issue should look out for that. And mind that when you charge your phone with the faulty chargers the phone will misbehave after you unplug the charger until you restart the phone itself. After the phone is restarted and you use original properly working Sony charger the problem will be gone forever.

So I got my firs SP back with a new charger and I was happy again.

Using it for a week has revealed a lot of software issues on it though. Sometimes the screen goes black when I try to unlock the phone and I have to lock and unlock it again to be able to see the screen working as it should. And as I have read so far a lot of people experience the same problem.

Another one is the crashing Walkman application which happens when you are browsing via Chrome and listening to music. I tried every available solution there is – using a third party app for listening to music, it crashes again, moving songs to internal memory – crash again, using another sd card – crashes again, resetting phone – issue persists, repairing phone via Sony PC Companion – both problems with the black screen and Walkman app still there. And I am not the only one who suffers these problems. So Dear Sony Support Team do you still think that repairing phone or installing fresh but originally faulty software is a solution to all the problems we face. It sounds more likely to me that your software developers are not doing a good job on those updates since a lot of us suffer from those same issues. I am running JB 4.1.2 12.0.A.2.254. And if the devices you test to replicate our problems are working fine I would gladly exchange my Xperia SP with one of the ones you have that are not facing these issues.

A recommendation concerning the Walkman app will be to make it sound a bit louder. I know that viewing pictures on all of the Xperia devices is a joy but music playing not so much. Listening to music with a headset can impair your hearing and I think that is the reason why Sony doesn’t make Walkman sound louder, but let people themselves care about their ears. If it sounds too loud you can always turn down the volume as to when the sound is poor you cannot do anything about it and that leaves you unsatisfied. Also put stereo speakers in some Xperia smartphones. I am sure it will appeal to a great number of customers. It will definitely make the Xperia experience even better.

Similar problems to mine are all over the web and not only Xperia SP users suffer these issues.

This is clearly not the way to go if you want to beat competition. There is an enormous demand on the market for smart phones and we all know the next Sony smart phone to come out will be better than the one we presently own, but will we still want to buy it after what we have experienced so far? Is it worth loosing present clients tending to become future and even permanent clients by neglecting existing problems with relatively new devices? It seems to me that participating in the race to produce the most tempting new smart phone Sony neglect problems with existing devices. Too bad…I sure hope quality control gets better in the future!

Nevertheless I remain a true Sony fan, though a bit disappointed and I am just expressing a personal opinion and XPerience!

Re: Overall impressions

Jozso1989 — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 15:21:59 GMT

I have an Xperia SP too, and having exactly the same problems, so its not only you who is disappointed.

Re: Overall impressions

dquilon — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 05:00:05 GMT

Its bad that you had to go through all that for your new phone...

Anyway I think Sony Xperias are not so perfectly crafted as you said... My Xperia Acro S has one flap a little bit raised, and I have seen another post about this exact manufacturing issue... nevertheless the water protection works pretty good...

Back to your SP, the Chrome/Walkman problem is a memory problem (RAM to be exact) where both apps consume quite a lot from our "1 GB" that we supposedly have... (Acro S actually have around 685MB total, even though it is advertised 1GB, so that leave me with 150MB tops most of the time)

Whenever I listen to music, I try to surf the web with Opera Browser in "Off Road" Mode, which compress the web page a bit and it manage memory better... Chrome is a RAM HOG... anyway I like Chrome better most of the time...

Your solution should be to use a different browser instead of a different music player..

And in my opinion, the Walkman player is the best stock Music player of the major manufacturers... I have had the Motorola Atrix 4G, Galaxy S3 and Xperia Acro S... and Walkman is the best looking, nice featured and the extensions really add the cherry on top... yeah, even better than the music player from iOS in my opinion.

Now if you prefer going to the market... well nothing beats PowerAmp (not free though). I rather not get duplicate type of apps, if the ones built in are good enough.

Hope this help

Re: Overall impressions

Fallforth — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 10:25:39 GMT

Thanks for the reply and your advice! I appreciate it!

There is always a work around for software problems and I have made my peace with not using chrome and walkman together. But now I've got a hardware issue that there is no work around for! I have got 3 dead pixels on the screen not so visible during daytime nevertheless they cause quite a sore to my perfectionist eye when it's dark. What can I say except that it was a mistake buying this phone. I am going to the dealer today and hoping for a replacement without scathe. Although on the official Sony facebook page I received an answer to the same review I have posted here claiming that Sony know about such issues and it may be a faulty batch of devices. They asked me for all the info about the phone including my country and the service provider's name. To be honest I feel lucky to have bought the phone from one of the major GSM operators in Bulgaria but non the less the thought that Sony could have sent a defective batch to the operator scares me. This means that even my replacement could have the same problems as the phone I own now and I have spent a lot of time and nerves already! I feel stuck and down in the dump!

I really like the phone though aside all of its flaws. it suits me just fine and I couldn't agree with you more that the walkman is the best. That's one of the main reasons I bought the phone. I have 16gb of music on my sd and since the walkman branded stream of phones has ended i had to chose walkman as an app at least. Ireally miss those old walkman phones! 2 loudspeakers playing stereo music, nice headsets, perfect soung, awesome interface.

I inteded to buy the mh1c headset cause they sound amazing and fit nicely in my ears not to mention the utility of the controls the headset has, but now I don't know what's going to happen with my phone so I will surely postpone bying it.

PS.

Nasko is my name Vallfen is the nickname I used the first time i posted about my overall impressions with th XSP

Re: Overall impressions

yongfa — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:48:12 GMT

Hw to optimize the phone to perfect or wad can make it perfect? Btw anyone r using the latest update with no issue?

Re: Overall impressions

yongfa — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 12:53:01 GMT

Can sony push out a better and no faulty update for sony users?