hi all
I thought I'd post some feedback and observations, as a UK (O2) z3 compact user, who’s just (in the last 2-3 days) upgraded to marshmallow.
I thought I’d put it here rather than the software update section, as it’s z3 compact specific.
These are in no particular order.
Personal dictionary
is now, functionally, very limited.
The ability to make use of it efficiently and/or restore a previous dictionary is gone.
The dictionary exists and you can add words to it, manually, one by one, via settings.
I understand also that Goggle have heavily limited the apps that can write to your dictionary. The result? Under lollipop, my keyboard (“jelly bean keyboard 4.3”) could add words directly to the dictionary and could also display/suggest words from that dictionary. I had a personal dictionary, exported, with over 500 words in it. Now it’s useless because it can’t be restored.
Very bad move IMO. I’m gutted that I’ve lost all my words. The personal dictionary is nigh-on useless too, since it’s so painful to add anything to it (through settings anyway).
I have also tested using the current Xperia international keyboard (7.2.A.0.32). I’ve found that user/custom words get added to “my words” (the Sony dictionary basically). The process seems pretty smooth actually. You type the word. The unrecognised word appears grayed out, in the word suggestions, you touch it and it’s added (to my words). Not bad. For those who don't know, you can get the Sony dictionary to scan your texts (sent ones i think) and gmail, to populate its word-list. You can in theory back it up as well. Just a shame this particular dictionary is Sony specific i.e. can’t be accessed by other keyboards. The other problem with the Sony keyboard is I’ve got very used to longpressing on fullstop or comma and getting a quicklist of maybe 12 different punctuation items. Currently it only list 3 or 4 items.
I also tested with the latest official google keyboard (5.0.25xxxxx). I’ve literally just discovered that you can, in a somewhat cumbersome way, add via the app to the personal dictionary. I say cumbersome because previously (with my jelly bean k/b) it would allow you to add/save a word to the personal dictionary as soon as you’d typed it (just a longpress on the word and then choose save i.e. two touches). As I didn’t use the lollipop xperia k/b (because it didn’t seem to suggest words that I’d added reliably), I can’t say exactly how that worked but going by the current version (see above), there are minimal touch solutions and then there are solutions which aren’t so efficient (i.e. this one)! Anyway, with google keyboard , there’s a spellchecker function in it now and you touch the underlined word, where you get some suggestions but also the option to add to dictionary or delete. Better than nothing I guess. I don’t like the keyboard though because I only appear to get 3 words suggested. Its word prediction is pretty **bleep** good though. I did have to download the UK dictionary but aside from that, it didn’t need much configuration. With the xperia k/b, it’s much better because you get the 3 dots under the centre suggestion and lots more word suggestions.
wifi issues
I’m experiencing wifi problems. Sometimes when the phone has been sleeping for a while, wifi just won’t reconnect. Other times it will. This has been widely reported by nexus users under 6.0.1. Others have also reported that wifi power/sensitivity/range has dropped off too. I tried one fix (to activate the legacy lollipop DHCP client) – that appears to work, until it didn’t lol. Please note that I want my wifi to 'sleep', when the phone sleeps and I've set wifi to do this - the other proposed fix for the reported wifi problems is to have wifi always on, which I'd have thought could be a battery drain.
EDIT (13 July 2016). I remembered a workround I stumbled across when lollipop was formally released for z3 compact. You simply turn the screen off and on a 2nd time. Wifi then magically reconnects. Annoying but it works. A later lollipop patch seemed to correct this reconnection issue.
Battery usage
So far, it’s been very mixed. I feel that the battery depletes noticeably more slowly with the display on, compared to lollipop. However, I know it’s also what you’re doing with the display on too, which matters. I feel that with 4G data on, battery seems to go down much more quickly. I’ve been using Whatsapp and Firefox mostly with my data connection, so I guess it could be to do with those apps. Battery usage by app though would suggest against these apps causing the discharge. Watch this space, since I’ve only been using the phone with marshmallow for maybe 2-3 days. Marshmallow has brought in Doze and App standby which should help with battery consumption. Doze strikes me as the more active of the two but also might interfere with app activity, so it'll be interesting to how 'well' it works. Apparently if your handset is not charging, unused and unmoved for maybe 30 mins, apps get kinda locked - apps on your phone will have no network access, the system will ignore “wakelocks” and no background tasks will be allowed to run. I wonder how things like Messenger and Whatsapp will be affected. I did just have a crazy thought - whether doze is somehow causing the wifi issues that have been reported. I'm doing a little test with "com.sonymobile.wifi" to see whether setting it to unoptimised changes anything 
EDIT (13 July 2016). taking com.sonymobile.wifi out of doze of course made no difference lol.
Camera2 API
has still not been implemented, to my knowledge, which IMO is ridiculous.
Icons
I guess must be smaller now, since I can fit more onto my screen, which obviously means you can access apps more easily (e.g. you can fit more onto your primary/home screen).
Lockscreen and LED notifications
Notification toasts don’t always appear on the lockscreen. This can be adjusted to lollipop behaviour in settings though (sounds & notification, ”keep notifications on lock screen”). LED notifications seem both unreliable and behaviour altered too. I absolutely swear that I’ve NOT had LED notifications for missed calls and some texts (although testing seems to now produce LED notifications consistently). Also, LED notifications seem to cease when I view the locksreen, even if I don’t interact with or dismiss toasts. This is at odds with how I felt LED notifications worked on lollipop. I must stress too that the Sony devs were amazing when they resolved the sound profile and LED problems which lollipop introduced. It's a shame that things seemed to have changed. I don’t know what’s happened with Marshmallow but I’ve found nexus 6P references to LED notification issues on 6.0.1, so who knows? Maybe it's some kind of bug. I've seen some posts suggesting problems on samsungs too but nothing conclusive.
Adding to your homescreens
This is I guess an improvement. It took me simply ages to work out how to add (since you used to be able to add apps, widgets and shortcuts from one location). Now they’re split between the app drawer and the normal widget bar, which appears when you start editing your homescreens. You can uninstall via the icons now too. Just hope I don’t forget that the cross on an icon uninstalls rather than just deleting the icon!
STAMINA mode
Appears to have been removed again (since reportedly returning in a May 2016 beta release of marshmallow). It’s kinda weird because I thought I’d seen it but can’t find it now at all.
I’ll add to this as things crop up.
Please feel free to add both positive and negative experiences of your own.
Cheers,
Gary
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