Is it worth upgrading?

[#1]

Hi all,

First time poster here. I have been using sony mobiles for the past 3 years, I started with the x10 and went through the whole upgrade to gingerbread debacle, I like sony products so took the plunge and urgraded to an Xperia s.

Now my question is- Is it worth updating to ICS, with all the stability problems, lag, camera faults, widgets not working that I have been reading about on these very forums or should I stay with my (Running fine and fast) Gingerbread?

I really wanted ICS but it just seems this phone wasnt designed with it in mind it was designed with Gingerbread, I may be wrong and these are just teething problems (I Hope).

My SI is UK Generic 3114, I thought we would have had it by now but it looks like it wont be until next week now at the earliest which gives me time to make an informed descision.

Please no flaming, I am not trolling or looking for an argument, just a few personal opinions about how ICS is running and comparisons to Gingerbread.

Thanks Guys

Blackie252

[Oriba]

My view is yes - upgrade.  There is no downside

I have a UK 1257-3114 as well, and impatience led me to flash the generic swiss ICS (see elsewhere on XDA via other posts here for instructions - must remember to thank those guys - it worked a dream first time)

I've had no issues since the upgrade:

• lagginess - surely that's just because you can now fully 'kill' items via task manager.  If you don't do that, they don't lag (becasue they're already running - you're just switching to the app!)
• camera issues - I had the same focus issues and slowness on gingerbread for approx 5 mins till I realised I should turn off the 'scene auto' thing to get access to the full set of camera settings, and hey presto it works just great (I think all the slowness is down to the auto setting trying to work out what's best to do)
• New 'Album' in place of 'Gallery' is GREAT - worth the upgrade just for that
• Really wanted the ICS data monitor thingy, so also wanted it for that
• Otherwise phone pretty much looks and feels the same - certainly no degredation in performance
• Quite like the updated browser.
• Can't see any difference with WiFi (other people have reported it is 'weaker' so fialing to connect - mine is identical)
• Also seems to be able to play a few xVid files I was having trouble with via the stock media player (I'd had to use MX Player previously as some files refused to play or had no sound.  presumably a few more CODECs added to this build)

So  I say go for it.  I've keenly followed all the chatter about pros and cons of ICS  and of the Xperia S generally, and I can't see a downside to this upgrade having been on it now since giving up the wait last night

[#3]

I know I will take the plunge and do it anyway, that's why I check this forum periodically to see if its been released for my SI.

I am geting more impatient however I don't really want to flash a stock version.

Thank you for your reply it was insightful and helpful.

Blackie252

[Thommo]

In my opinion don't upgrade just yet

I also upgraded mine via the Swiss firmware and had nothing but issues for instance

My battery saw no improvement infact I think it actually made 4x worse - Some of my apps stopped working and yes I did a full clean data wipe and then started fresh but some wouldn't work the main app been Copilot satnav, Since then I have downgraded back to Gingerbread

I didn't like the photo gallery app as my photos of my kids aren't date or name modified and as such where placed anywhere - You can switch to view them by folders as on Gingerbread but once I opened the img in fullscreen mode it made no difference what folder my photo's are in and as such displayed them in date order or name order

The poster above mentioned codecs I have never had an issue most of my videos are in .flv format or a format that the built in player doesn't recognise so I use a free app called Mobo Player found here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.clov4r.android.nil there are other apps that will do the same job but this is the one I use and if it aint broke don't fix it.

Other issue I had was the wi-fi - Yes it would work and turn on and connect but it kept loosing the connection then reconnecting (This is a know bug with ICS however it would appear that Sony support deny it but it is well documented by many over at XDA and a few more on here) , If I went into my garden i'd loose the connection altogether - using GB I don't have this issue, I had a few more niggly issues but nothing that a little tweak wouldn't fix

My main issues are listed above wi-fi, Battery, Copilot and photo gallery these are my issues and for those reason as stated I downgraded back to Gingerbread and once again my phone is running like a to use a comparison well oiled Windows XP machine and not a rushed Windows Vista

[Oriba]

It is amazing how much variety of experience there is with this upgrade.  Maybe it's a mixture of our expectations and our user 'types'

I'm not a gamer, so won't notice anything about the phone in that respect.  I use it for mainly for photos and video recording (of my children, mainly), plus internet, email, radio, music and a few apps. (oh, and the odd phonecall and sms)

I connect to Wifi when I can.

All of that lot is working absolutely fine for me on ICS, with nice improvements here and there.

For info, I did nothing fancy in my manual flashing of the swiss ICS firmware.  I didn't do any resets or cleardowns of data.  Just flashed it and my files/photos remained nut phone was otherwise reset (none of my own apps, no contacts, no texts)