Hi, I thought I'd make a discussion to help outline the issues I found with the new Android 4.0.4 update, for the Xperia Arc.
Model: Lt15a (Canada)
Build Number: 4.1.B.0.587
1st problem: There is no "slide to unlock" option available with any of the screen lock methods (Pin, Password, Pattern). There is only a "slide" screen lock option which is really the "slide to unlock" feature but doesn't require any other form of protection (Pin, Password, Pattern), which is pretty useless. In Gingerbread, the "slide to unlock" feature was immediately followed by a Pin, Password or Pattern. The only way I found to have both the "slide to unlock" feature and the protection (Pin, Password, Pattern) is to open the camera app and than turn off the screen. The reason to why the "slide to unlock" feature should appear before the Pin, Password & Pattern is because it has quick access to the camera (Slide to the left) and has a larger area to display the music player (when music is playing) and the time, instead of cramming the music player with the Pin, Password & Pattern area and leaving out the time, date and alarms. Also, when you have to confirm your Pin in order to change your screen lock type, you should be given a number pad instead of the regular keyboard. All the above is very important and must be fixed immediately!
2nd Problem: When using your keyboard and holding down the smiley button for the emoticons list to appear, pressing the "back" button doesn't work and you are forced to choose an emoticon for the list to disappear. This is very frustrating and should also be fixed!
3rd Problem: The "Reject Call With A Message" feature doesn't work! There is a new reserved area at the bottom of the call screen that I believe was meant to be pulled up to view the "Reject Call With A Message" list but it doesn't work. It's strange because it seems to be implemented but doesn't work! We were promised this feature but it's no where to be found!
4th Problem: Why did the Xperia Arc not get Wifi-Direct in the Android 4.0.4 update? This a very nifty feature that I thought would have been forsure implemented in this update! Why was this feature stripped out? It is much faster than using Bluetooth to transfer files!
5th Problem: The calendar app with Facebook integration shows false Facebook birthday dates! If someone's birthday is on August 31st, the calendar will show that their birthday is on August 30th. For some reason, it displays people's birthdays one day before the real date. This problem only seems to persist with the Facebook birthdays and not the Facebook events that are integrated into the calendar. This needs to be fixed!
6th Problem: The Camera & Video Apps also have their fair share of problems! The camera app should keep the current layout except add four options on the left side from top to bottom in this order: Image Resolution, Type Of Photo (SCN Auto, Normal, 3D Sweep Panorama & Sweep Panorama), Smile Shutter & Flash Settings. The rest of the options should be displayed when clicking the "options" hardware key, as they already are. There should also be an option in the capturing method setting that allows you to take a photo by using both "touch capture" and the hardware key (Same goes for the video app layout), which was present in Gingerbread. The video capturing quality seems to have suffered a lot during this update and I think that's all because the default video capture seems to have been zoomed by a whole lot when compared to Gingerbread. It's as if I zoomed the video capture halfway on the meter in Gingerbread! Anyone knows that when a video is zoomed, the quality suffers drastically and I think that is what happened here! The default video capture must be restored to that of Gingerbread's immediately! The video app's layout is not bad but it should include these four options on the left side from top to bottom in this order: Video Size (Quality), Scenes, Exposure Value & Photo Light. The rest of the options should be displayed when clicking the "options" hardware key, as they already are. When attempting to focus on a object in the camera app, all it does is show an ugly green square in the middle of the screen, whereas in Gingerbread it showed various green squares of which object(s) it was focusing on. The Sweep Panorama and 3D Sweep Panorama app do that perfectly, but the Camera App does not. Also, the design of the green focusing squares in Gingerbread were more professional and were the ones found on DSLR Cameras, so they should also be changed! These problems mentioned above are the most important and should be treated as priority status for fixing!
7th Problem: There is no cover art for my music anymore. I decided to re-transfer all the music (All have cover art) from my laptop to my phone again to see if this update deleted my music's cover art or that it simply had a problem in displaying them. After trying that, I concluded that with the new update, the music player can't display any of your music's cover art. The fact that this problem exists is kind of embarrassing and should be fixed immediately!
8th Problem: This is a minor inconvenience but should also be considered! Sony Mobile's developers should follow Google's lead and allow all the currently existing widgets to be re-sizable. Given the current widgets, it is extremely hard to find a combinations of widgets that would perfectly cover up each of the five slides. I also found a problem with the "Photos & Videos" widget! When I first updated my phone and went to the home screen, the "Photos & Widgets" widget had remained in its original size (2x2) but once I removed it and decided to place it on the homescreen again, it took up a space of 4x3 to my surprise. That widget should be fixed and made re-sizable!
To all the people reading this discussion, some of the other problems you may have might be temporary and can be fixed with 5+ restarts. I had some other minor problems and they were fixed with a couple of restarts over a period of three days! Although these 8 minor-major problems, the Sony Mobile developers have worked very hard to deliver the Android 4.0.4 update to the 2011 Xperia Porfolio and deserve to be rewarded! It is extremely hard to deliver the Ice Cream Sandwich update to phones that only have 512MB of Ram! They built powerful software and optimized the apps as much as they could to work on the phone's internals. Well done!
