Crap by Sony

I have recently bought Xperia M5 mobile phone (400EUR) and SBH54 bluetooth headset (100EUR) both from Sony. W was previously happily using cheaper Xperia Z1 Compact mobile phone (250EUR) and Motorola HT820 bluetooth headset (30EUR). I DID NOT EXPECT TO GET SUCH A CRAP FROM SONY!

Xperia M5 D6503 has several issues that makes it a phone for a child, at most, including Bluetooth Headset problems that makes it impossible to talk, UTB OTG problems, no MHL support (HDMI-over-USB), no Cardboard VR support, no Repair from Xperia Companion for unlocked devices, and many more. This is NOT a phone for a developer not even to the working person, just a crappy toy. I consider ALL XPERIA “M” SERIES AS JUNK! The only sensible well designed both hardware and software seems to be “Z” series, maybe “X”, DO NOT WASTE TIME AND MONEY ON XPERIA “M” SERIES.

SBH54 Bluetooth Headset looks really promising “wearable assistant”, but at the moment it cannot really work well with one device, not to mention offered multipoint (only two peers at most!!!) connection that worked well in older devices. For instance I had no problem with 10 year old Motorola to listen MP3 from a computer and have a phone ready to talk in the same time which is not possible with SBH54. I only get frustrated with this crap, and other users as well complain on your official forum. This device is still a pure chaos and works unpredictably. Cannot really perform its basic function “headset” with Xperia M5. Android application does not work as Service and disappears when you need it most. You need to pair it again with the same devices after poweroff. Headphones sound it very good but they break apart. Its not really useful nor reliable in any way at the moment. Hope it gets a firmware update soon and I could take it out from the trash.

sbh54

This is really sad because hardware looks very well for both devices. In theory parameters and functions look fine as well. However, Software/Firmware makes it useless buggy annoying junk. Shame on you Sony for releasing such a buggy junk! I am happily placing Sony, XperiaM5 and SBH54 into HALL OF SHAME, with no respect to those two unfortunate failures. Time-To-Market is not worth the Respect and Customers that you loose.

World is now at point now where companies release happily a new product that is still at early prototype stage and don’t even give a shit about that.. people loose time and money for this crap..

Note: After all struggle and years of play with Android I consider only NEXUS to be sensible and reasonable choice to work with. Sorry.

Sony Xperia Unlocked Mobile Firmware Restore

Sony Xperia phones are my favorite. Very good and durable electronics, amazing photo camera, nice utilities on top of standard Google Android OS. I have also always respected Xperia for allowing users to unlock their phones for Open-Source Firmware Customization on this amazing hardware..

xperiacompanionfail

Unfortunately, Sony seems to have this habit to make a bad decisions, so amazing hardware is not always followed with a good software. This is why Open-Source Customization is so important. I have already found several nice devices with a really bad firmware. What is more, this corruption seems to spread, and Sony blocks factory firmware restore for an unlocked devices with their official Xperia Companion utility. This means unlocking a device does not only Voids a Warranty, but also silently makes it Impossible to Go Back to a Stock Firmware! This is really bad idea.

emma

Luckily smart people tends to predict and help each other out. Developer team of Sony Mobile released EMMA utility (nice name by the way) that allows you to re-flash mobile that is unlocked in case something goes wrong or you simply want to get back to a stock firmware.

Open-Source Firmware Customization will become a standard, even for large enterprises, with mutual benefit to their customers, because looking at the big picture we are part of the same eco(no)system..

Sony Xperia Service Menu

You can enter Service Menu on Xperia devices with code:

*#*#7378423#*#*

Xperia Android Bootloader Unlock

It is very kind of Sony that they created an easy way to unlock Bootloader of Xperia Android Smartphones. You can now customize your phone firmware and OS :-)

http://developer.sonymobile.com/unlockbootloader/unlock-yourboot-loader/

Sony Xperia M5 Bugs

I have just bought next inexpensive Xperia M5 phone with pretty nice hardware. However I already found those things to be missing or deliberately removed:

  • USB OTG does not work (solved).
  • CardBoard VR does not work.

Update regarding USB OTG – “it’s not a bug its a feature” – after you connect a USB device using OTG cable you need to run “Detect USB device” application that will make OTG work. Considering security this may be a good choice to allow external devices by hand.

Dualshock4 PS4 Controller Bluetooth Pairing

dualshock4-bluetooth-pair-cederom

There is one simple way I have discovered to pair with Dualshock4 Playstation4 controller using standard Bluetooth Pairing Procedure. Make sure controller is turned off, then press and hold SHARE button, then press and hold PLAYSTATION button until LED starts to blink (two short white blinks every few seconds). You can now discover and enjoy your Dualshock4 controller with any Bluetooth (HID) enabled device. No cables and no additional applications necessary! :-)

Dualshock4 is a really nice high quality and precise controller that can be used in many more interesting applications than only playing games. It is compatible with Bluetooth HID and USB HID standard. It contains 2 analog joysticks, 2 analog sliders, 13 buttons, touch-pad, accelerometer, vibrator, audio speaker with headset port, RGB LED, micro-USB port, and external expansion port..

Unfortunately, lack of self-compatibility seems to be a strong disadvantage of Playstation platform. Not only because PS4 does not run old software. Dualshock4 seems to have different way of handling button events as compared to Dualshock3 (default Playstation3 controller). It has some sort of auto-repeat feature (like PC BIOS keyboard) instead of button change events (like MIDI). This renders Dualshock4 unreliable on Playstation3 platform because of massive control glitches. Also DS4 PS button does not produce system menu on PS3, so you cannot use it as the main controller replacement. Sadly, it is impossible to use DS3 controller on PS4 as well. Hopefully, switching CPU to AMD64 and OS to FreeBSD could bring more self-compatibility to Playstation in future..