perhaps it's a matter of attitude.. 
No, really - there is nothing wrong with your phone.
The "full auto" mode is designed to help take a photos regardless of any conditions, when you are on the move, it rises ISO dramatically so the photo you are about to take is not moved. Especially in low light. The light there is a key. In auto mode there is a spot (default in the center of the image) that gets focus and measure the light. So if you aim on the black area with the center of the image it guesses there is much less light than when you aim it at some more light filled one. But in this auto mode you can tap on the screen to point the camera your actual spot you want to be the perfect one.
Just remember this one single thing - light is a key there. Make an experiment - try to take one photo aiming the darkest spot on the composition, and after that take another, exactly the same crop but touch first the brightest one. You will see a huge difference. That is how every camera works in automatic mode.
My advice - switch to manual. There are plenty of automatic settings still there, like ISO (sensitivity for light), resolution, etc. Play with them, that's all. You will know then that this camera is not some regular, stupid auto crap - it really is some advanced, big deal piece of equipment waiting to know you. The manual mode is worth gold there - it allows you to control the situation. Noise is unavoidable in extreme light conditions, you simply can't find any digital device that would not make noise in dark. I really could explain it to you purely technically, but what you need to know as a regular phone user is that the camera you just got can do much, much more than any other you had already. It uses the sensor the new, modern way, like oversampling. Postprocessing (basically making the taken photo useful for printing) is really heavy in low light. It just try to make things better even if the light conditions are hopeless.
You have seen the night shot I took.
This could make you understand a little better what I am talking about if you are not experienced already in photography:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14494153@N04/sets/72157635667875693/
all of those were taken in the same time, the same poor light (tiny 30W bulb far away on the ceiling), just different settings. I intentionally took this bouquet to make details talk. Read the description on every single one to find out how each one was taken.
I wish I can help you there to get your camera make good shots for you. You paid a high price for a phone with built camera and you probably struggling now, because your previous ones performed "better" in auto mode. But this is really quite a hardware, much more advanced than before. Premium phone comes with premium features, there is now much more than before - you actually need to know them first to understand how good it is and how good pics you can take with it. Ask me anything - I will try to help you the best way I can. I am sure that with just a little of effort to get used to this new equipment, you are gonna take pics so stunning that nobody would believe you they come from a phone.
Sorry, I have to sleep sometimes
C6903 differs from C6902 only with LTE support, C6902 doesn't have it (don't need one in this region). So there is nothing to fool you about dude.
I was using the old firmware before, yesterday I upgraded to 532, but I can't tell if there is a big difference in camera software (battery life is much better now though).
You should really provide some more shots. Get a box.com account, if you register one from your Xperia you'll get 50GB free cloud space there (2 days left if I remember correctly). Then upload some, so I can try to shot similar ones and we can compare our photos.
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