[Xperia Z Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] SDR-UK:
Hi all!

I've followed XDA Developers for some time now; back when I first had the HTC Desire and again when I had the HTC Sensation XE. However, after a very poor experience with the HTC Sensation, I vowed that I would never have another HTC again. Thus, I turned to Sony and the Xperia Z offering. The device is amazing, it looks gorgeous, feels snappy and is a hell of a turn-around from Sense UI that I've been bogged down with for years.

I've had the phone approximately a month now and for the most part it has been a positive experience. However, I get very device specific issues regarding a few apps on the phone, they are as follows:

Sony's own media-specific applications: Walkman, Album, Movies & Camera.

Google's own: Play Store, Play Movies, Play Music & all of the other offerings (books, magazines, etc.)

Lastly, the official Twitter application and Amazon MP3.

They all crash! I can be looking at photos or videos or even listening to music using ANY of the apps listed above and I just get booted back to the home screen with no crash report. It doesn't say "Walkman has stopped working", just instantly crashes and boots to the home screen.

At first, I believed it might be the Mobile Bravia Engine as I was experiencing the issue heavily within the first days of use on the Sony's media apps (before I installed Twitter, etc.), so I turned off the MBE and nothing. The device still booted me back to the home screen whilst viewing photos or videos or listening to music.

I started to believe that maybe the SD card was at fault so I hooked it up to a Windows PC and ran all of the checks and there appears to be nothing wrong with the SD card after I repaired it (initially there was the error pop up that says to fix the device). And when I installed Twitter, it was an indication that maybe there was more of an underlying problem than a dodgy SD card anyway (since that doesn't store or operate from the SD), whenever I am typing a Twitter message, I get instantly booted out to the home screen... again, no crash reports.

Any tips?

The only thing related to this strange problem that I have found is on the Sony Mobile site that says there was a corrupt font in Taiwan... which obviously does not affect me as I live in the UK.

For a list of apps installed:

Adobe Reader, Alarm & Clock (S), Album, All Stars Island, Amazon, Amazon MP3, Astro File Manager, Back-Up & Restore (S), Box, Calculator (S), Calendar (S), Camera (S), Car Mode (S), Chrome, Contacts (S), Cover Art Grabber, Cracked Lite, Diagnostics, Dictionary, Dodol Wallpaper, Downloads (S), Dragon Fly!, DroID3Tagger, Dropbox, Earth, eBay, Email (S), Engadget, Facebook, File Commander (S), FM Radio (S), G+ Photo, GMail, Goggles,, Google, Google Settings, Google+, Hangouts, IMDB, Joystiq, Let's Start PSM (S), Local (S), Maps, McAfee Security (inactive), Media Remote (S), Messaging (S), Movie Studio (S), Movies (S), Music Unlimited, Name[dot]com, Navigation (S), NeoReader (S), Netflix, News & Weather (S), Notes (S), NowTV, O2 Priority Moments, O2 Priority Tickets, OfficeSuite, Phone (S), Play Books, Play Magazines, Play Movies, Play Music, Play Store, PlayMemories Online, PlayNow, Playstation, Playstation Mobile, pocket BLU, Settings (S), Shazam, ShopTo, Sky News, Sky+, Slices, Smart Connect (S), Socialife (S), Sony Select (S), Speed Test, Steam, Support (S), Tone Picker, TrackID (S), TweetCaster Pro, Twitch, Twitter, Update Centre (S), Video Unlimited, Voice Dialer (S), Voice Search, Walkman (S), Wikipedia, Wimbledon, Wisepilot for Xperia (S), WWE, XDA, Xperia Link (S), Xperia Lounge, YouTube

(S) = System default apps from Sony

Here is miscellaneous information regarding the phone:

Model Number: C6603 (Sony Xperia Z)

Android Version: 4.2.2

Build Number: 10.3.1.A.0.244

Any help you can give will be much appreciated!