12 replies to this topic

[The Soup Thief]

Hiya,

There's no Xperia Ray forum on Modaco, despite there being activity on XDA and on the Sony website.
Niglas (another ex-blade user, like myself) pointed out that the Ray is a lot like the Xperia Neo in terms of its internals (aside from the Neo's HDMI socket) so speculated that Ray owners might post here.
So here I am, making a Ray outpost.
I was lucky enough to win it in a Land of Droid Competition a while back, and it's a really lovely device.
I've rooted mine and upgraded to the Sony official Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0.3) which is a joy to use.
Minor gripes would include:

• the slightly poorer handling of Bluetooth in ICS than in Gingerbread (it's harder to initially set up pairing with a new device on ICS while on GB it was very smooth) - once paired it seems pretty robust though
  
• that you have to manually turn the camera light on and off when you use the camera (it's not set up in the rom to flash automatically, perhaps to reduce shutter lag - I don't know)
  
• the incredibly poor handling of auto-screen dimming in high and low ambient light settings

See, I said they were minor gripes re this fab little phone.  Who needs two cores anyway?

Any other Ray-ers out there?

[jnemeth]

 The Soup Thief, on 24 May 2012 - 12:11 PM, said:

Any other Ray-ers out there?

Sure.
I was also looking for an Xperia Ray topic but I didn't find it either. My previous device was an Acer Liquid, having a huge community here, I hoped for something similar with the Ray as well.

Regarding my device, it just spent a month in a repair center, and the final solution was a mainboard swap. The problem was very simple, the mic simply stopped to work. There was a call where my partner hardly heard me, than I tried to call back cos I thought it was a problem with the network, and she didn't hear anything then. And it was not the mic itself, because the phone dodn't work with a headset either. Strange enough...

Otherwise I really like it, very compact size, relatively strong hardware (defintely strong enough for my purposes) and a defintely good screen. The only thing I would appreciate is a bit bigger memory. But SD card can do the job so far...

So, let's see if we have other Ray users out there?

J.

[The Soup Thief]

Hiya jnemeth.  Looks like it's just you and me so far
For what it's worth, there seem to be fair sized Ray forums on the Sony mobile site and also on xda - you might want to check them out
I'm being offered the 4.4 OTA update at the moment.  Unfortunately I can't upgrade to it cos I installed clockworkmod - whenever I've tried it just fails at the last moment
I need to spend a good couple of hours on it sometime - apparently I'll need to downgrade to gingerbread, re-root and then upgrade again
Has yours upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich over the air? Or did you go meddling, like I did?

[scuzzbucket]

I would say ditch the official ICS update from Sony. Its not quite there (judging from Neo). I found one of the nicest roms to be JJDoctors Hybrid rom which was ported from the Ray to the Neo. Locked/unlocked bootloader compatible.

[jnemeth]

 The Soup Thief, on 01 July 2012 - 01:47 PM, said:

Has yours upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich over the air? Or did you go meddling, like I did?

Yes, it was upgraded right before I handed over to service, then I got it back after factory reset of course, and now it is updated again with a slightly newer version of ICS (4.0.4 it says).
Well, I have no real comparison for previous official versions as I was using my Liquid almost with custom roms only. The last one was based on the official 2.3 or something... In fact, I did not even root my Ray yet (and I was very happy for this choice of mine, I had no problems at all with the warranty) and I'm going to use it with official rom for a while for sure. But I will check out the forums you proposed and maybe got some serious impact to start the customization.

Anyway, my is a weird animal. I bought it in Hungary, but it was imported (some half-offocial way for sure) from a german language territory, but the official ICS update came with some built-in applications for Asia, specially Indonesia I guess. I have no idea where this phone was supposed to be sold originally...

One question: my phone is getting hot quite quickly when the graphic processes are working. Does yours do the same?

J.

[jnemeth]

 scuzzbucket, on 02 July 2012 - 03:14 AM, said:

I would say ditch the official ICS update from Sony. Its not quite there (judging from Neo).

I would be interested in your concerns with the official ICS. As I wrote I have no comparison (specially not on this device), so it woud be good to know what others think about it. Some good / bad points, please, if you don't mind.
Thanks!

[scuzzbucket]

The official ICS was the first ever manufacturer upgrade I'd done on Android. My experience is mostly good, just niggles everywhere. Multitasking is worse because of far stricter system management. I frequently get my browser closed with more than three or four tabs open. Makes me scream in frustration. Games that worked fine on Gingerbread and  MIUIv4 and FXP/CM9 don't run (Babel rising, GTA, Hills Of Glory, anything a bit heavy). Phone can slow to a crawl as the system frantically makes space for what you trying to do if you switch between tasks in a hurry. Phone can take an age to wake when you get a call, so you can't answer quick/see who is calling. Probably more that I'm forgetting. It all adds up, rather than being one big issue. Though Sony did warn there would be issues. Overall I'm pleased, just that it can be better. And there is an easy root method now for locked and unlocked bootloaders, so moving off stock is much easier.

Edit: my Neo gets hot too. You can feel how hard it is working.

Edited by scuzzbucket, 04 July 2012 - 02:59 PM.

[jnemeth]

Thanks for sharing. It is strange, because I have seen such issues with my previous device, used with custom rom.
Now I don't have closed browser or deadly slown down phone at incoming calls. Though, going back to the home screen can take some time from browser or a bit heavier game. Well, as I'm not a big gamer, I'm not really bothered.
Anyway, I will check what is available on xda, rooting would be necessary anyway...

[scuzzbucket]

I don't know if your bootloader is unlocked our not, but I have noticed a few more roms for locked bootloader phones on the Neo forum. Well with unlocking it if you can though.

[The Soup Thief]

Hiya
Yeah - on official 4.0.3 the phone does start getting pretty warm
Also, oddly, I've noticed over the past couple of weeks the battery life seems to be deteriorating a bit - Battery usage in Settings tells me android OS and Google services are gobbling a lot of juice
Also often when I take it out of my pocket it's often inexplicably warm - hadn't used to be so
Also seems to be a bit more sluggish than it used to be
I have rather a lot of apps on it currently so probably a bit of a purge would help matters
No Forced Closes that I've noticed - browser seems pretty stable
I'm very busy the next month or so - when things quieten down and I can afford to wipe all the important stuff I have on it currently I will get into the belly of the beast, unlock the bootloader and start flashing some good stuff!

[scuzzbucket]

I was finding the phone slowing down a bit too. Bit the bullet and did a factory reset. For some reason on the stock unmodified rom I continually need to turn wifi and gps off. They seem to have a mind of their own. I'm making some time this week to unlock/root. I want MIUIv4 back. Or FXP. JJdoctor's Hybrid rom is excellent on battery etc. And since I started using Atom Launcher (same devs as Nemus Launcher and can use loads of Go themes from market) my phone to behave better for some weird unexplainable reason.

There should be some JB rom testing to do soon enough too.

Doesn't the Ray have a 4.0.4 update available? I thought they rolled it out around the end of the Neo/Arc update cycle, or have I imagined that?

Edited by scuzzbucket, 16 July 2012 - 06:04 PM.

[The Soup Thief]

Yeah - there's a 4.0.4 OTA update - it's actually queued up on my icon bar. Unfortunately it won't install for me as I have clockwork installed already
Reckon I may follow your lead and have a go at factory resetting. What could possibly go wrong eh?

Edited by The Soup Thief, 16 July 2012 - 08:56 PM.

[scuzzbucket]

Nothing will go wrong....go wrong...go wrong...go wrong....

[scuzzbucket]

Nothing will go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...