I got my new Xperia Z1s on Tuesday but unfortunately it's going back today and they're sending me a new one. (Though took a bit to get t-mo to do that - see below)
I love the phone overall, but after using it for an hour or so I noticed occasionally I couldn't reposition icons or widgets, or add new items to the screen because it would either treat my long press as a quick tap or just ignore it. The problem was minor at first but over the course of the next day it got worse and worse and worse until it was happening almost all the time. Whenever that problem happened I also noticed the keyboard would get really wonky if I was using swipe style input: it would spit out a bunch of small words instead of the longer word I was going for. It was behaving as if i were repeatedly lifting my finger, which tells me it's the same problem in both cases: they screen was not registering my continued touch, but thinking I had lifted my finger when I hadn't.
I haven't heard anyone else complaining about this (and they would if it were happening to them, it makes the phone really hard to use), so I'm hopeful this is just a bad unit and my next one will work fine!
UPDATE: Someone on XDA responded they had the same issue, and noticed that it only happens when holding the phone, not when it's laying on a surface, and I confirmed mine's behaving the same way. I played around a bit more and the issue seems to happen when my fingers are touching the side of the phone while I hold it.
-------end of technical issue, customer service drama below----------
Called t-mobile, went through the usual obvious stuff, they referred me to Sony, went through the obvious stuff again, they then told me to download this utility and use that to repair the OS in case there were corrupted files. Unfortunately the Z1s is so new that when I got to the step of downloading it said "Oh we don't have software for this phone available." The Sony rep had said if that didn't work that we will have done everything we can and to just exchange my phone with T-Mobile.
No big deal, that sort of thing happens with new phone releases, so I called T-Mobile this morning and said I wanted to exchange for another one. After a bit of a delay the rep came back and said "You have to exchange with Sony, they're not one of the manufacturers we do exchanges for." T-Mobile sold me the phone, T-Mobile gets lots of money from me every month, so I didn't appreciate that response and (politely) told him I thought that was very bad corporate customer service. Bit more delay while he talked to his supervisors again and came back and basically said "Sorry that's the way it is". I then said I just want to return it, so then he said ok I need to transfer you to someone else for that.
After waiting on hold for about five minutes the same guy came back and apologized saying the other department's phones were all busy. He talked to someone one more time and this time she agreed to order me a new phone, and gave me a return address to send my current one to. They'll credit me the shipping costs, plus $10 for my troubles, and in the meantime my replacement should be here tomorrow or Monday at the latest.
If they hadn't done this it would have been a black mark on their customer service reputation with me, which up until now has been excellent, so I'm happy they did the right thing and kept that reputation intact!
I love the phone overall, but after using it for an hour or so I noticed occasionally I couldn't reposition icons or widgets, or add new items to the screen because it would either treat my long press as a quick tap or just ignore it. The problem was minor at first but over the course of the next day it got worse and worse and worse until it was happening almost all the time. Whenever that problem happened I also noticed the keyboard would get really wonky if I was using swipe style input: it would spit out a bunch of small words instead of the longer word I was going for. It was behaving as if i were repeatedly lifting my finger, which tells me it's the same problem in both cases: they screen was not registering my continued touch, but thinking I had lifted my finger when I hadn't.
I haven't heard anyone else complaining about this (and they would if it were happening to them, it makes the phone really hard to use), so I'm hopeful this is just a bad unit and my next one will work fine!
UPDATE: Someone on XDA responded they had the same issue, and noticed that it only happens when holding the phone, not when it's laying on a surface, and I confirmed mine's behaving the same way. I played around a bit more and the issue seems to happen when my fingers are touching the side of the phone while I hold it.
-------end of technical issue, customer service drama below----------
Called t-mobile, went through the usual obvious stuff, they referred me to Sony, went through the obvious stuff again, they then told me to download this utility and use that to repair the OS in case there were corrupted files. Unfortunately the Z1s is so new that when I got to the step of downloading it said "Oh we don't have software for this phone available." The Sony rep had said if that didn't work that we will have done everything we can and to just exchange my phone with T-Mobile.
No big deal, that sort of thing happens with new phone releases, so I called T-Mobile this morning and said I wanted to exchange for another one. After a bit of a delay the rep came back and said "You have to exchange with Sony, they're not one of the manufacturers we do exchanges for." T-Mobile sold me the phone, T-Mobile gets lots of money from me every month, so I didn't appreciate that response and (politely) told him I thought that was very bad corporate customer service. Bit more delay while he talked to his supervisors again and came back and basically said "Sorry that's the way it is". I then said I just want to return it, so then he said ok I need to transfer you to someone else for that.
After waiting on hold for about five minutes the same guy came back and apologized saying the other department's phones were all busy. He talked to someone one more time and this time she agreed to order me a new phone, and gave me a return address to send my current one to. They'll credit me the shipping costs, plus $10 for my troubles, and in the meantime my replacement should be here tomorrow or Monday at the latest.
If they hadn't done this it would have been a black mark on their customer service reputation with me, which up until now has been excellent, so I'm happy they did the right thing and kept that reputation intact!
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