When I bought my Sony Xperia XA1 (with preinstalled Nougat), I was very happy with it. I
only was a bit disappointed with the camera, and, after a month, I started experiencing the
sadly typical touchscreen issues. So, I was anxiously awaiting the Oreo update,
hoping that the camera would be improved and the touchscreen problems would be solved.
However, It was not so. In fact, I found a series of drawbacks and many users found a
series of issues too.
Whereas issues can be retated to 3rd party apps or some specific devices, drawbacks are
changes deribelately done by Sony, making the phone worse than it was before. I think it's
not only in my phone model, but I don't know where to post this...
Here I'm elaborating a list of DRAWBACKS with the hope that we can have in the future what we already had:
- Camera takes more time to be loaded, making you to lost the moment you wanted to capture.
Also I sometimes get a black screen when trying to load the camera from the lock screen,
forcing me to close and re-open again (I did a software repair an cache cleaning after the
update, before someone said something about).
- Video camera does not record stero sound. Moreover, most other camera apps can't record
stereo sound either
- Zoom in front camera: While front camera has been slightly improved (i.e. NOT aplying
soft skin effect when it's deactivated, thank you), now it's not possible to make zoom
(whereas it can be done with any other camera apps).
- No vibration when typing: this can be a waste of battery, however it may be useful,
specially when you have touchscreen problems...
- No magnifier when typing (longpressing the cursor): this was very useful, specially when you have a not so big screen.
- Night mode: Before the update, this mode was appropriately integrated in Xperia Actions.
Now, it has been replaced by "reduce screen brightness", which is not enough for protecting
your eyes when watching the screen in low light. Moreover, 3rd party apps to aply blue
light filter either crash or don't apply the filter to notification bar nor bottom buttons
bar (home, back, etc.).
- Decreased sound volume: before update, the jack output was louder. Now the volume has decreased in general and even is automatically decreased when put at near maximum, showing a message saying that it is for protecting my ears, but I'm using an external speaker!
- Zoom in in big pictures in Album app is slow, taking a few seconds to load the view,
whereas it was almost instantaneous before. This is a known issue even before the update in
other phone models such as X Compact, thought.
- Battery icon in the notification bar works normally, however after scrolling down the
bar, the battery icon shows still like 100% full.
On the other hand, many people have found a series of ISSUES. They may not be Sony's fault, and may not be suffered by all users, but I think they also deserved to be adressed:
- App issues: Is possible that this should be adressed by apps developers, but at least I'd like to know this was going to happen with the update. I can mention that some app cameras now don't reach the maximum resolution of my camera (23 Mpx), and, as I mentioned before, most of them cannot record stereo sound in videos. Also there are camera related issues in other apps like Snapchat.
- Problems with touchscreen edges: Many users had this problem before Oreo update (including me), but many other had started experiencing problems with touchscreen rigth after the update, so it may be solved by software after all.
- Many people have experience problems with WiFi and Bluetooth connections. But also there where this kind of problems before the update and it's neither my case (yet, touch wood...).
- Also some people also report lagging, battery draining and phone heating after the update. Personally I haven't suffer any of this problems, maybe thanks to having done a software repair right after the update (except a genereal feeling of unstability that I cannot explain).
I hope all this drawbacks and issues will be adressed in future updates. Please, comment if you miss any of those lost options and/or if you have found different problems.
