Issues with my Z1 Compact

[ramzissimo]

Hi everyone,

It's been around 2 weeks since I bought my black XPERIA Z1 Compact from a Sony Store here in Saudi Arabia. In these two weeks I had the worst disappointment ever with a device I bought with 2099 S.R. ($560). Let me summarize the reasons of my dissatisfaction in the follwowing points:

1. Build quality: Though the phone feels premium and looks fine, it got several scratches on its back cover. When I checked later, it turned out that this back cover is not made of glass as Sony claimed in early its ads, but from some very scratch-prone plastic. Add injury to insult: The screen protectors that could minimise this issue are not available in Saudi Arabia, and even if they were, they don't have the Sony logo on them.

2. Camera: Honestly, the Z1 Compact camera is the most painful disappointment. I snap 90% of my pictures indoors, in low-light conditions... and all I have now is grainy photos with the poorest details and worst resolution. You will not probably believe me if I tell you that my 3 year-old Nokia N8 takes much better photos than my 2-week old Z1 Compact.

3. Screen flickering: This happened to me at least 10 times since I bought the phone. The screen will just start flickering for no reason and keep turning features like Airplane mode on and off. It won't stop until I reset the device with the red key.

4. Very low volume: The sounds on the Z1 Compact are simply not loud enough, either for ringtones and notifications or for music and video playback. 

5. Unpromising software update: Like any other XPERIA owner, I was very excited when Sony announced the 4.4.2 update. However, I was more disappointed than ever when I read the comments here and there about the issues that this update has caused: Quick battery draining, wrong loudspeaker path, Micro SD issues etc... So do I have to keep the poor 4.3 or upgrade to the poorer 4.4? I would have never imagine myself asking such a question after buying such an expensive "high-end" device.  

Dear Sony... I hope you are at least aware of these issues and intending to solve them in the near future... Thank you.

[Uliwooly]

You should contact Sony directly 

http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/support/contact-us/

[Global]

I think here is also sony. Sony staff should read these posts. I contacted sony and they said me "do a clean install" :D. Yeah we all know clean install. But these are firmware issues that only sony can fix.

[umernall]

Yes, in an ideal world you would expect Sony to be actively monitoring and responding on here - but sadly that does not seem to be the case.

The more of us that log an official ticket, the more chance we have of an official fix.

My previous phone was a Samsung S3 and my experience was that Samsung did not pay that much attention to forum postings.

Similarly, I have a high end Lumix camera and again there seems to be very little if any official response to any issues reported in their official forum.

At worst it cant do any harm to log an official ticket.

I bought the Z1 compact on the basis of great reviews about the battery life, but I am a bit disappointed by the wakeup process using so much CPU...