Your thoughts on the ICS update

[Johan]

So we thought we would create this thread for you to share thoughts around the ICS update.

The purpose is to help out other users or readers to make a decision if they are going to update or not.

Please list pros and cons with the update and if you would recommend others to update.

Don’t forget to mention what phone model you have.

Also

Please don’t just say that the update is good or bad. Please share in detail what is good/bad with the update.

We will be monitoring this thread closely and delete any post that does not contribute to the purpose of this thread.

Please do not post single issues. We are happy to help you with them in a new thread.

Follow this link to start a new thread: http://talk.sonymobile.com/community/support/xperia2011/post!input.jspa?containerType=14&container=2...

We won’t be able to answer questions like “When will my country get the update?” or “When will my SI number get the update?” so please don't ask - the post will be removed.

UPDATE: Posts which did not conform with the purpose of this thread has been deleted, 2012-04-27.

[#2]

Hey, I'm a student living in singapore

using xperia arc s.

What's good in the new ICS update,

-It has a new User interface (UI)

-New develpoer options

-Hardware acceleration

-New music player option (But still GB music player)

-It's the lastest Google Software, Beat's staying on GB...

What suck in the new ICS update,

-laggy User Inferface (UI)

-Battery seem to drain faster

-HD games performance has gotten alot worse! (MORE FORCE CLOSE)

-Camera HD video has deprove...

-User has expect the ICS update to have improve our ram problem after a long wait, however....

-All of xperia apps like internet, lock screen, etc etc will lag and load a hell lot slower then GB.

(IF THERE WILL BE A FIX UPDATE)

What we, xperia user expect in the new update for the 2011 lineup.

-A lot less lag...
-New Xperia S music player

-Better battery performance

-More option to limit our ram usage like performance assistant

-Fix bugs...

EDIT:have yet to see if the camera image taken had suffer any compression yet.

Review

it has a nice UI which will make our xperia phone stand out among other phone like HTC and etc,More option to play around like the show touch which works like a mouse pointer.Newest android ver which will make your friend 'WOW'...However i dislike how bad the performance has gotten even after such a long wait for the new ICS,will hope for another update to fix these problems.

[Bobeobi]

Arc S. Ukraine.

Good:

1. Some Android 4 features

2. More options

Bad:

1. A lot of useless stuff that use RAM

2. Performance assistance is very poor/

3. Old kernel

4. Old adnroid 4 version. The new 4.0.4 is a lot faster

5. Old music player and other stuff. Why not to use apps and widgets from Xperia S? It's simple copy-past. They work perfectly on 2011 devices.

6. Where is WiFi Direct?

7. Laggy, 'cause heapsize is very big compare to GB, and again a lot of bloatware. Why I need to use customs ROMs, root, etc. just to delete those apps? RAM is good only after deleting useless preinstalled apps (Facebook, Xperia football, Fun & downloads etc.)

[Auni]

First of all thanks to Johan for this Topic. Following Bugs I am facing after updating to ICS in my ARC S.

1. Home Launcher is buggy [Lags when scrolling between screens.]
2. GSM Data is buggy. [I need to enable disable 2/3 times to make it work]
3. HD Games experiences Graphics Glitches. [screens attached below]
4. Angry Bird Space Doesn't work. [Touch Control unresponsive]
5. Video Camera recording quality decreased.
6. Phone Dialer needs takes 3-4 seconds to appear [Even After a fresh Reboot]
7. Battery Drain [ Nothing New and as expected]
8. In GB after rooting the performance gone up a lot. But in ICS even after rooting and removing many bloatwares, i don't see any major changes.

Positive Issues:

1. Music Player access from Lock Screen.

2. Still Camera Captures improved a bit.

3. Few new Widgets.

4. Developer Option.

5. Browsing is little bit faster than GB

As a whole the productivity of the phone decreased a lot.

Those who are complaining about Xperia S widgets and apps are absent in ICS, may consider this, that every Manufacturer/Marketer has a different plan for their product line. Xperia S widgets are clearly a different attention for the SONY NXT series. Like for ARC S it was the 1.4 Gig processor. So every device has some USPs which should not expected to be present in every device.

[MarkMRL]

Copypaste from a thread I made a few days ago.

Pros:

1. The new ICS interface is pretty cool.

2. Can set a proxy in Wifi settings

3. Stock browser has a lot more features compared to the one in Gingerbread.

4. Newer youtube app is better than the old one.

That's about it.

Cons:

1. Overall, the system feels way slower and clunkier.

2. Home is laggy and slow when scrolling from one homescreen to the next, also when pulling up the app drawer there is a noticeable FPS drop.

3. Live wallpapers are laggy, even simple ones like the Nexus are slow, you can actually see the moving squares stuttering across the screen. Using a LWP makes the already slow home even slower.

4. HD video recording is also laggy, recorded video is stuttering and runs at under 20FPS average!

5. Games are noticeably slower than GB, benchmark scores have also taken a small hit. Games stometimes stutter too, even simple ones like Fruit Ninja occasionally stutter. HD games are noticeably slower.

6. The browser is way slower than the old one in complex page. If there is a flash video, response to touch is delayed by a few full seconds. Flash performs worse, as 720p videos were smooth in Gingerbread, they are very slow here. Having a flash video playing in a page makes the browser slow down a lot.

7. They still pretend Ray doesn't have a fully working ALS (Automatic Light Sensor) on board, as there is no option to set brightness to automatic.

8. Still no automatic flash when taking pictures.

9. Music player is the same one as Gingerbread, it has not been improved in the slightest. I consider it a terrible music player by the way.

10. Sony Ericsson home doesn't allow for widgets to be resized, also, it has no new widgets, they are the same from Gingerbread.

11. Some apps force close for no apparent reason after being started.

12. Android version is 4.0.3 and not the latest 4.0.4

Mr. Johan, please, can you share if you have any news about whether or not they are already working on fixing this ICS release?

[Veresova]

Copy:

Hi. It has been a couple of days since I updated, and I have been extremely disappointed in features, performance, stability, and I think that overall, this update is a step forward and ten steps back.

Pros:

1. The new ICS interface is pretty cool.

2. Can set a proxy in Wifi settings

3. Stock browser has a lot more features compared to the one in Gingerbread.

4. Newer youtube app is better than the old one.

That's about it.

Cons:

1. Overall, the system feels way slower and clunkier.

2. Home is laggy and slow when scrolling from one homescreen to the next, also when pulling up the app drawer there is a noticeable FPS drop.

3. Live wallpapers are laggy, even simple ones like the Nexus are slow, you can actually see the moving squares stuttering across the screen. Using a LWP makes the already slow home even slower.

4. HD video recording is also laggy, recorded video is stuttering and runs at under 20FPS average!

5. Games are noticeably slower than GB, benchmark scores have also taken a small hit. Games stometimes stutter too, even simple ones like Fruit Ninja occasionally stutter. HD games are noticeably slower.

6. The browser is way slower than the old one in complex page. If there is a flash video, response to touch is delayed by a few full seconds. Flash performs worse, as 720p videos were smooth in Gingerbread, they are very slow here. Having a flash video playing in a page makes the browser slow down a lot.

7. They still pretend Ray doesn't have a fully working ALS (Automatic Light Sensor) on board, as there is no option to set brightness to automatic.

8. Still no automatic flash when taking pictures.

9. Music player is the same one as Gingerbread, it has not been improved in the slightest. I consider it a terrible music player by the way.

10. Sony Ericsson home doesn't allow for widgets to be resized, also, it has no new widgets, they are the same from Gingerbread.

11. Some apps force close for no apparent reason after being started.

12. Android version is 4.0.3 and not the latest 4.0.4

Overall, I'm very disappointed. This update actually made me have buyer's remorse about my Xperia Ray. And it's not like I'm a total noob, I even tried flashing an overclockable kernel, rooting and supercharging, but I could never achieve satisfactory performance with this new rom.

Oh, and downgrading is not easy if you don't have an unlocked bootloader.

RAY new ICS:

After returning to GB again a week I tested the new ICS ray

Clear ICS (Europe - Czech Republic)

BUG:

1. notification LED not working after ICS update:

not work with LED missed call !!! Here another theme users:

http://talk.sonymobile.com/thread/36368?tstart=0

and

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1639116

SMS OK.

Test menu LED OK

Tested reset and repair the phone.

Tested on two phones ray.

GB is OK.

BUG:

2. adjustment sound: on the lowest setting big loud!

BUG ?:

GB/ICS ask the sound ON/OFF

Compared GB vs. ICS there is a change in the function widget.

Now the ICS not sound OFF, but switched to vibration.

Here:

http://talk.sonymobile.com/thread/36990?tstart=0

Request to add.

3. dialer start 3-4 seconds to start up :((

4. HD video application laggy menu

5. HD recording is also laggy, recorded video is stuttering and runs at under 20FPS average !  (stabilizer off)

6. audio MONO – GB stereo

7. camera no auto macro

8. very old kernel version

9. double photo gallery, why ?

10. Gmail & Email responds slowly

11. old player application (boring.. Sony Walkman Phones?), energy saving applications (add time settings), the weather widget (please add animated Xperia S), add SONY: on / off settings, alarm clock, stopwatch, countdown, timer, world time, new TrackID etc.

Info:

- Wifi (WP2) + GPS OK

- Automatic Light Sensor OK

Remove:

- McAfee Secure (eg free Avast)

- two applications Fifa.com why?

- from GooglePlay installed Manager LiveWare installed (3.2.8) that reported an error during installation that is not valid, the phone is 3.2.7 ???

What want to:

- application of energy-saving time setting (XperiaS)

- animated weather widget (XperiaS)

- repeating notification sound mised call and sms

- sms autoresponder to missed call

Good and thank Sony:

the new ICS interface and features

larger upper bar (clock, icon)

better quality camera and photo

browser

monitor dat

face Unlock

new setting menu

new dialer search

new camera UI

send message to reject call

unlock home screen

music player on lock screen

The question at the end? Tests anyone phones with new software?

[#7]

I've running the final release on my Arc S but I also ran the beta the day it was released.  So I've been living with ICS since February.

Pros

1. I like the UI (dialogs and buttons)

2. I like the Settings app - the data usage feature especially.

3. I like the new camera UI

4. I love the notification bar - swipe to clear, accessible from lock screen, etc.

5. It's pretty fast - the UI doesn't feel sluggish compared to the beta.

6. My battery life is better than with GB.

7. Shipping the stock ICS Gallery app was a good idea - I use it instead of Xperia Gallery because it's much, much faster.

8. The new ICS stock widgets are good, especially the new calendar.

9. The launcher rarely reloads anymore - under GB and the ICS beta it was terrible and required SuperCharger (which requires root).  You have obviously tweaked the memory settings and that is very welcome.  I actually love the Sony launcher so am glad this was addressed.

10. More internal space - 420MB up from 380MB. Excellent.

11. ICS browser is in a different league to the GB one.

12. I love the new themes.

13. The new photo widget is much better than the old one.

Cons

1. Sometime touch controls in games like Angry Birds, Frisbee, etc. stop working altogether and only a reboot or power off will fix it.  This is incredibly frustrating and other arc S owners have complained about this on XDA.  It is very hard to reproduce.  On my device if I start the Draw Something app then hit Home and fire up Angry Birds then there is a 50/50 chance touch will not work in the latter.  But it also happened with the beta long before Draw Something came along.  Driver issue perhaps?  Either way, once it happens you're in trouble - killing off all apps doesn't help.  The popular Temple Run game exhibits very weird touch behaviour for everyone with ICS. Perhaps it's related - sure would easy enough to reproduce! Install the game and then try to play it. Good luck! 

2. All-day events are not shown in the new Calendar widget which I think is fixed in Android 4.0.4 - shame we missed out on this release.

3. The Performance Assistant isn't very helpful.

4. Too much bundled bloatware that cannot be removed without root access.  I realise Sony will have done commercial deals with some of these app providers but not letting people remove apps they don't use (games for example) is poor.

5. Having a camera button on the lockscreen should of been optional as I'd prefer the sound toggle - I have a dedicated camera button after all.

6. FB status updates in the Contacts app don't work at all unless you have the official FB widget on your homescreen.  This is daft.  Timescape can fetch status updates OK so why not the Contacts app?  As a BIG fan of Timescape I don't want the FB widget on my homescreen.  This is an issue with GB that you should of fixed for this release Sony.

7. IMHO the Sony Weather widget is the best looking weather widget I have seen (and I've tried many) but it still can't use your current location for the weather - come on Sony! This would of been a great mod to make.

8. Where is the Favourites and Call Log widget?  I found it useful.

9. More/different wallpapers would of been nice.

The first issue has almost driven me back to Gingerbread. It might yet!

I wasn't expecting the Xperia 2012 NXT UI, new music player, etc. but a lot of people seem to be disappointed with the set of GB widgets.  I think Sony should consider revamping some of the apps/widgets to appease people as even though it doesn't bother me at all it is clear from posts here and on XDA that people are upset about this.  You included the same themes as found on the Xperia S, etc, and the photo widget, so adding the launcher and music player wouldn't of hurt - although you'd have needed to ship the beta with this I guess.

[#8]

@Johan

Won't our feedback will be considered for future updates???

anyways

Pro's

1. New UI(its very smooth)
2. More control over apps (developers options is great)
3. Face unlock
4. Games ( some are workin better and some are crashing which used to work fine in GB)
5. Internet browsing is superfast now :smileygrin:   
6. Getting good amount of free ram

Con's

1. Choppy video recording very frustrating
2. Very less improvement in quality of pics only the size is doubled
3. Music player app still the same no change (only appears at lock screen)
4. No resizable widgets provided
5. DONT KEEP ACTIVITIES Option should be optimized better and home launcher should be exempted so that it does not relaunch everytime we press home button
6. Video player is also choppy having little lags in playing 700mb movies which used to run on GB
7. Some apps eat lot of Ram .. better optimization is required
   
   4.0.4 Updated
   
   So this Update was for Better management ... let us see what it does

Improvements

1. Ui (now more smooth )
2. Video recording is now better
3. Ram management is even better now
4. Less lag while playing back video's
5. Multitasking is little better now

Things still not fixed

1. At night video recording still takes 2-3seconds to record properly , the recording is still mono 😐
2. Dont Keep activities option still not optimized.It still cause the home to relaunch everytime we go to home
3. Dailer stil takes 2-3sec to open  , even though i dont have much phone contacts (so this is very bad 😐 )
4. No  improvements in benchmark scores which means gaming experience is not that smooth

[#9]

Here's my 2 cents to the conversation,

Pros,

1.So far better os than gb

2.Face unlock(which was not in the official upda I had to flash gapps to get it working)

3.ICS part of the ui which I really like,blue and grey parts not NXT parts.

4.Camera's jpeg compression is not 100% now I guess,which is a very good thing.

5.More internel space free

6.Bteer ram management

7.GAPPS gallery

8.New dialer,phonebook and smart search.Finally they thought to give us something new after os update :smileygrin:

8.1000 revamped icons by sony...lol

Cons,

1.NXT ui,worst ever I've seen and when its mixed with holo theme it looks like a person with very bad hair day.Also default wallpapers quality is very bad.

2.Same old same old apps.

3.Xperia Gallery

4.Battery life,yesterday after 11 hours of normal using phone's battery was down to 45% 😕

5.Sony lockscreen,it just sucks comparing to aosp,so used a custom theme thanks to Zdune of xda.Now my phone looks more ICS than ever

6.Same old music player which was good for nothing,only used it for few hours and moved to Xperia S player.

7.4x4 app drawer,I like it when its 5x4.That way less app drawer screens

8.Performance assistance app,seriously ?

9.Not 4.0.4 update

10.Older games like Backstab,Asphalt 6,Assassins creed,Spiderman,Street fighter 4 crashes after 30 seconds of game playing.Probably not optimized for ICS but still I see it as a minor con since redownloading data over 5-6gb for games I already downloaded is kinda insane 😕

11.Video playback is very choppy,even in after market player 😕

12.NXT wallpapers...duh

13.No option to take screen shots.I know google hard coded vol - with power button to the os but that combo is pain in the a$s.Please add take screenshot option like in gb 2.3.4

14.Still very bad music quality,kinda sadennes me after using a W595 & a W995 😕 & since I'm a big music junkie kinda make me wonder if I would ever buy a Sony phone again.From 2006 to today I only used Sony phones (W810i,W580i,W595i,W995i and now Xperia Neo V) bcos I liked what you guys did with your phones.And starting to not like the path you are heading down now.

Was using icS for few days now,think about giving us 4.0.4 update and do something about battery life.A fix for battery life is needed big time 😕

Edit-Also one thing I've forgot.I never managed to get the update using pc companion.Some weird error came.Thanks for whoever created Flashtool :smileygrin:

Even this took nearly 3-4 hours to download and after seeing this and seeing pc companion closes it is kinda heartbreaking at the first time

Guys any idea what does this means ?

Message was edited by: Thilina

[#10]

I've been playing with ICS for the last hours and as for now I've quite pleased with it.

Pros:

new UI;

new notification bar - it is much more helpful than in old GB;

new browser;

new calendar widget;

new gallery;

more available internal space;

Cons:

laggy video recording;

sometimes menus are a bit laggy:

old track id;

contacts menu

I've haven't tried much so I can't really tell how it behaves with games and app. I had an issue with an app that just wouldn't open, but I believe it might be due to the app itself cause all others are functions well.

My major concern for now is related with the contacts pane; At least in my case, I can't get big sized pictures to my contacts instead of the 96x96 thumbnail. this is bugging me a little, cause I really enjoyed having the big sized pictures in personal contact pane and in calling menu and ICS supports it... I've tried to manually chose the picture from gallery and in some contacts it gets bigger and in others doesn't.

Does anybody noticed this bug too?

Overall I'm quite pleased with it