Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsDO NOT BUY ( Especially if using TMobile ) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2019
update Nov 4, 2019
This phone is crap if you are a tmobile customer. I have been with them for 11 years and the Xperia 1 is driving me nuts considering that I paid $1040 for the newest of the new that they (sony) said would work on Tmobile.
TMo also said that it is compatible with some but not all of the bands that they use for LTE and 4g.
I cannot stand this PHONE. The phone does not work well, nor does the GPS. After months of traveling by driving 10K plus miles across this USA I can say that this phone is crap on T-Mobile if rated by it's modem alone. My friend has an Iphone 8 and it outperforms this CRAPIERA tenfold with connectivity to cellular, wifi and GPS. I lost signal more times than I care to count while driving across the country. It doesn't matter if I was in Den, Mem, Raliegh, Nashville, NOLA, Shreveport, DFW or on the roads between those cities, this phone has spotty cellular and GPS signal everywhere I have been and in between too. I rely on Google GPS daily and especially while traveling outside of state. It lost the GPS signal so many times. As a comparison I drove from San Antonio Texas to Vegas using my XPERIA Z3, thats android 5.02 in January. Not once did i lose GPS (no audible notification) or the ability to make a phone call (that i noticed).
I cant use my phone as a phone and cant use it for GPS because they are not reliable. My travel buddies iphone 8 never lost GPS or the ability to make phone calls, not once, where this Sony did so constantly. The "GPS SIGNAL LOST" alert blasts through the car stereo which becomes so much more annoying with each continuous notification)
I have traveled a lot since getting the Craperia 1 in July and only now (Nov) have I been able to call TMobile to try to sort things out. Well it turns out that this phone was not designed to work with all of TMos preferred frequency bands. It is set up to work on 3G primarily, being the 1900mhz Frequency in particular. The problem is that TMo and the other majoy carriers are shifting their signals to to a frequency range that is much much lower in the 600MHz (Band 71) & the 700MHz (Band 12) range. If i were near anywhere nearby to a TMo antenna/Tower I would likely experience wonderful service even though it is outdated and currently being replaced. The problem is that I have always had borderline issues with obtaining a strong signal be it LTE or 4G on any of my previous phones while at my house. That is why they (TMo) gave me a cell spot for use at my house. Had i known this phone wasn't fully compatible with TMobiles network I would have not even considered buying it.
Frustratingly even after the restore that it was suggested I do today I am still not able to have a steady conversation while on wifi. I really only decided to do the reset because of all of the below issues that I am also having. I did it in hopes of repairing those issues and hopefully helping with my connectivity. time will tell with the below isssues but as for the connectivity over cellular, NO DICE! it still performs horribly while on a phone call.
I'm going to waste more of my time now trying to figure out why it doesn't work well on WiFi either.
I dont know if this is an Andriod Pie thing or Sony but you can no longer LOCK a text from being deleted.
The phone has died over night causing me to miss my alarm because for whatever reason it does not want to go to sleep all of the time. I have to manually put it to sleep every time. I can't just expect it to do as I told it to in the sleep settings.
I cannot send texts immediately. Memes, Pictures and longer texts take sometimes HOURS to be sent. Whether on wifi or not. - probably has to do with the incompatibility with TMos networks
You cant see the phone while outdoors. it just wont get bright enough and just when you think it is bright enough you will get a message saying that it is about to overheat so please turn it back down. Some will say to use the adaptive brightness or custom feature. Neither of them fix the problem and I bet that those same people live somewhere other than where it gets above 90 degrees frequently and probably work indoors. I So much for Cinema Pro, You cant use it unless you are indoors or it is a cloudy day.
THIS PHONE SUCKS! I WANT MY MONEY BACK DO NOT BUY
they cant fix the message icon issue where it constantly displays that there is a text message..
They can't fix the issue with not being able to Click on an address or phone number in a text and get a pop up with options. The screen just flashes. They tell you to delete the messaging apps cache and whatever to fix the problem. It will then work for an unknown amount of time before it reverts back to not working again. Daily i have to fix this.
The speaker near the bottom of the phone is like 7 times louder than the one by the earpiece and it has much of the EQ range that it needed for clarity in speech. A lot of the sound effects are in stereo so if you have one of the two speakers covered you are going to be missing out on half of the audio. The earpiece speaker and the one by the bottom are not tuned the same. The moment you cover that speaker with either you hand while in landscape or while sitting it on your belly to rest while viewing its in a vertical position you will notice a SIGNIFICANT drop in the volume as the speaker is now blocked and the one by the earpiece is weaker in volume in comparison. The audio then becomes unintelligible.
I'm probably going to return it for another one here REAL QUICK because of the following charging issue: (update I couldn't return it because it took ONE spill and chipped the black finish off the frame) Great design Sony!
I have had the phone for 9 days. Last night while i was in bed reading and charging the phone began to cycle through charging and not charging with the slightest of movement from the cable. I cannot emphasize "slightest" enough. This happened a good 8 times in less than a minutes before i finally said screw it and unplugged the phone to continue reading without being disturbed by its cycling and notifications.
Today i let it die all the way and plugged it in to fully charge it. Yes, this phone charges like no other I have ever owned or seen before. It absolutely blows my mind with how quickly it does the job. I was away from it for thirty minutes and when i returned i noticed that the LED was not illuminated as it should be while charging. I wiggled the phone and got nada. I then tapped the power button to see where the charge was at and to my surprise it began to power on (so i thought) but was actually just acknowledging that it had been plugged in to charge which it then began doing so.
I Cant use the phone while it is chargning without disturbances unless it is in a completely static position. Do I have to check it once i plug it in to make sure the USB-C is seated correctly 9 days out of the box?
Yes, it is very slippery so get a case for it. Dont buy the $12.99 Tyrain ones from Amazon labeled "smooth" red, blue etc. They are **bleep** for cases because they barely cover maybe 60% of the phones edges, besides being equally slippery.
Dont buy the sony style cover for it either. I got the white one. Its not white any more after used some cream on my face and then grabbed my phone. The white case is now all rusted in color, even the clear plastic spine/face cover has become discolored. Ok, so I'll bite the bullet on that one... whatever but that doesn't explain why the plastic cover/face is falling apart two months after purchase (it was $60 from the UK) two of the corners on the "lid" are pealing back and have become sharp and frayed. I did nothing to start its demise. yet Sony has a no warranty on accessories policy.. not even for lifelong customers.
While watching videos on FB with the volume at one level, say max, and then a commercial takes place, when it returns to the video the volume is significantly lowered with no ability to return it to a higher level. No clue if this is Android 9.0, Xperia 1 or FB but it really sux. This only happens while using the phone speakers, not while on Bluetooth. headphones
While watching videos on FB in vertical mode the volume will be at one level but when you switch to landscape mode it will again lower to something less than where it had been with no way of returning to the previous volume besides rotating the screen to a vertical position.
I am an airhead and later figured out that this is because the lower speaker is 7 times louder than the
one by the ear. Once you cover it up or hinder its output in any way you will notice a significant loss in volume / clarity.
I got this phone because I love the Xperia line, period. I didn't get it to play games primarily though the remote PS4 play option was definitely a selling point for me. I haven't played any games that way just yet though i have played PUBG and Fortnite. Both have frozen while loading the games. The phone wont do anything until I manually close the game. hmpf. I'll reset the setting to 30fps and see if that helps as I am currently on 60fps.. you know, the ones they bloated about being so awesome. smh
While playing PUBG yesterday the navigation bar started popping up and not hiding, preventing me from seeing a portion of the screen and subsequently screwing with my game-play because i couldn't access some of the game features. I had to rotate the phone 180 degrees to get to those functions. When i did so the nav bar just went to the other end of the phone. It displayed the LOCK symbol, as it should since thats how i set it up for game-play. It had worked flawlessly for the day or so prior when I had played, but not this time. Youre supposed to tap the lock and then the nav bar functions would be visible and available for usage. I couldn't unlock it while it was on either side of the phone to use the NAV bar to save my life so I ended up having to restart the phone.
I keep getting texts, reading them and then the Text logo continues to display that I have (x) amount of texts, until i restarted the phone. Sony and Android do not care to fix this and there is no known repair other than to manually delete the cache in the messaging app daily.
I am with T Mobile and have Visual Voicemail. I have so far gotten three system notifications that I will have to manually sync my VM. I haven't gotten any voicemails since installing the app so I cant say whether or not it is functioning properly anyways. I can say that the system keeps showing me the standard VM notification icon at the top of the phone which is weird since I haven't gotten a single voicemail since installing the app. I just upgraded from the Xperia Z3 (yes it lasted this long) and on that Android version, 5.02, i was able to override the stock VM notification when i installed the Visual VM from TMo so that i wasn't getting duplicate notifications. I have not seen that option on this build. - three months later I tried to use it and the same issue was occurring numerous times a day. TMo visual VM app on the Play store is smothered with complaints about this same issue. I called Tmo and they said that it is a patching issue that they have been made aware of but that it is an Android fix that is needing to be done for it to work properly. I have deleted the app again until further notice from Tmo
It really isnt that bright of a phone while outdoors. I knew that going in but didn't know how bad it really was until i started using it outside. I love how fast it is and how comfortable in the hand it is. every time you brighten the screen to 100% you will get a notification about how prolonged usage at that brightness level could damage the screen. It pops up EVERY TIME and there is no way to make it not appear again. Too bad that I have to turn the screen up all the way to see the damn phone while outdoors. what the hell were they thinking when they designed this POS? if you work outdoors, BUY A DIFFERENT PHONE.
As for the fingerprint reader and facial recognition I am pretty happy with them both. it may take a time or two every now and then but for the most part they make access simpler more often than not.
- update three months later. I take back what I said about both the facial and fingerprint options as they are both CRAP crap CRAP! I work in the dark a lot or I am inside without perfect lighting so the facial recognition doesn't always see my face. I get it. But my fingerprint doesn't change. I have 4 fingerprints saved and more often than not I find myself saying screw it and going for the manual log in because the scanner wont recognize a single one of them.
60 days later. DON'T BUY THIS PHONE, IT IS NOT RELIABLE. CAN'T SEE IT WHILE OUTSIDE ON A SUNNY DAY. CAN'T USE THE CAMERA BECAUSE YOU CAN'T SEE THINGS AND BESIDES THAT IT OVER HEATS, OVER HEATS AND OVER HEATS ALL WHILE DOING NOTHING. I live in Texas. This phone was not designed to withstand our hot sunny days.
SONY DOESN'T CARE ABOUT ITS MOBILE CUSTOMERS. I'M ON MY 10TH XPERIA IN 7 YEARS. THE OTHERS WERE BETTER BY MEANS OF BUGS AND FLUID USAGE. SCREW YOU SONY FROM A LOYAL AND SCREWED CUSTOMER OF YOUR PRODUCTS.
