(For information purposes only: I’ve had EVERY Ericsson/Sony Ericsson/Sony phone since Ericsson T28 and my last/previous Sony was a Z5 Compact. It was 11 phones with Sony in it’s name last I checked. I then moved to the dark side and I’ve had two iphones since. I might be a borderline Sony Fanboy and I’m definitely not a noob. I bought the XZ1 to test Sony quality and Android usability, it was a very decent phone on paper still and price was incredible.
I’ve been using it for 3-4 months now with little or no problems...well except wifi connectivity issues at random for no apparent reason)
Two days ago i updated FW to latest build (47.2.A.10.80). I did this via phone, OTA update. That day, I noticed the phone was getting hot in my pocket. I didn’t check if anything was wrong, I just remember noticing on several occasions. Coming home, I noticed severe battery drainage. I guessed screen must have been on or an app hanging/looping in the CPU. I rebooted phone, charged it fully around 18:00. I didn’t use phone much, but did use a radio app with sleep enabled in 45 min. Then went to bed and missed my alarm the next day. The phone displayed the red battery symbol. I thought it was the radio app not turning off. Funny I thought, recharged fully.
The next day I noticed phone getting hot, so I started checking it more often. Severe battery drainage. In 5 min with screen off, I lost 2% battery. Checking battery usage/app usage, nothing out of place. App usage showed normal percentages, while battery was a lot more drained. As screen was on, I could actually see battery % dropping another two % within a few minutes. I rebooted, then turned off for a few minutes, recharged etc. Still happened. Battery went from all day to one hour.
These are things I noticed:
- Phone getting hot while screen is off
- Battery dropping rapidly, while looking at battery % and screen off.
- Extreme slow charge, took over 4 hrs to reach around 80%. (Supplied charger and cable)
- Charge would stop/hover around 90% and stopping. Phone reported full charge (via time since last full charge).
- Turning phone off, it would charge above 90%, but still extremely slow.
- Connecting to an external (Sony) battery, phone charged rapidly to 100%.
- Phone still decharging rapidly. Supplied charger slow, several external batteries faster.
Info :
- I’ve only updated OTA
- Only used supplied offical charger and cable
- Some external batteries for top up
- Problems started after last update
- I’ve reset phone, but not complete flash via tool.
- Never dropped, not a single scratch.
- Tried several charge cycles
- Done all the regular hoopla, update of other apps etc.
Thoughts :
- I don’t understand how a security update can affect the battery such (perhaps its USB-C related?)
- It appears to be two problems, slow charge and fast discharge.
- Why is external battery faster to charge?
- Power control function problem? CPU loop problem? Rouge app?
- Reported battery usage and actual battery drainage does not compute. They are not correlating.
All phones get bugs and bad updates. The iPhone did too. But Apple always fixed it swiftly. I don’t have the same confidence in Sony, for varying reasons, also own experiences. A phone is extremely important and a functioning phone is more important than phone functions. Trust is the last thing Sony Mobile can loose. Basically, it’s people,like me who’ve kept Sony afloat. People listen to my advice and right now I cant recommend Sony. They’ve made many wrong decisions and lost market share, but trust was always there. I’m just saying, don’t think anyone at Sony will read this. But I believe if they listened more to their user base, they wouldn’t be in this predicament.
Would be a shame to loose Sony.....would I buy a new Sony....?
