[Xperia SP Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Parkside:
1. Don’t know either

2. Yes its heavy, a manly phone :)

3. The loudspeaker is fine, may not be the loudest on earth but it’s fine.

4. Apps to SD is a contentious issue – the official line is that Google don’t like external SD cards and from Jelly Bean onwards it was no longer part of any Android builds. It’s the same with hardware navigation buttons, Google would prefer them to be on the screen soft keys. However manufacturers can do what they want – Samsung does what it likes and still uses hardware buttons and has tweaked their builds to allow app to sd. Sony haven’t had hardware nav buttons for some time now and perhaps their love for DRM makes them sympathetic to the idea of stopping users from moving apps around.

Anyway, it doesn’t work without rooting, hell it doesn’t work in the normal sense when you ARE rooted – hopefully a nice CM build will come along and resolve the situation for us.

5. Yes and no – it would be nice to install loads of games without a care, but I only really play one ‘big’ game at a time. Rooting can help too because you can move the data portions of big games to an external sd card with folder mount.

6. Range is excellent for me, the authentication process can take ages though, I had the same problem with my 2011 xperia – when the phone is trying to connect to the router signal strength seems to drop and I think you get into a loop of the phone thinking the wifi is too weak to connect to and it swaps to data, the signal goes up again and you try to connect but the same thing happens again. With my 2011 device most custom kernels, especially ones that were cm10 based, connection was instant – this is almost certainly a software issue.

There is talk that the most modern routers don’t have as many issues.

7. The fix that works best for me is the one that changes the level at which the phone decides the wifi reception is so bad it has to swap to data – the range is and has always been great for me, better than other devices in my house.

8. There have been 3 build versions of the phone so far – I’ve always had to apply the tweak. Don’t think Sony regard it as a problem.

9. There are no custom roms out there that provide the latest version of android, they are all based on 4.1.2. There should be a 4.2 build from FreeXperia at some point and a 4.3 build from some independent developers, but there is no ETA for either of these builds. This is not to say that the developers of existing custom roms haven’t tweaked wifi so it works better.

10. As I said, I’m certain it’s a software issue.

11. The camera’s auto mode is pretty poor in conditions which are less than optimum – you can take a nice photo if you mess with settings BUT in my opinion this is missing the point. If I want to mess with settings I’ll use a proper camera, I just want to take quick snaps with my phone in situations where I didn’t necessarily think I’d need to bring a camera. For the SP (and other Sony phones) the camera doesn’t support this type of spontaneous photography very well.

12. Haven’t heard of procapture, thanks for the tip :)

13. See my previous comments – the only builds available for the SP are 4.1.2 based.

14. Hope it’s the software – I’m no expert, but people talk about too much processing/compression.

15. I had a 2011 xperia with 8MP and the camera on the SP is not significantly better – I don’t think Sony believe that it’s a problem.

16. Unless the apps/mods/roms you install after root cause hardware damage, you can always just flash a stock rom – so warranty should be unaffected. Of course if you are unable to flash a stock rom because of hardware damage…

17. You do receive updates if you’re rooted. Historically if you updated OTA you kept root, via the PC meant you lost it.

18. The smart phone market is moving so fast that I doubt any phone out today will be able to play the most demanding games from 4 years time without any trouble. The latest iphone has 64 bit architecture and this will soon follow for android. Similarly, I imagine that graphics chips are upgraded once or twice a year – so you might be as many as 8 cycles behind what is considered top of the range. The SP is a midrange phone, with some flag ship properties.

19. There are still some touch issues in my opinion, though this is improving build to build.

20. Don’t know about the S3 – the XP screen is fine though, not mind blowing, but in no sense bad or embarrassing.

21. Fine for video calling, perfect in fact. OK for selfies if close up. Do not use for anything else – as mentioned it would only be an average FC for a 2011 device.

22. Not really you’ve been very thorough :)

That's pretty much it for the phone, however, I have more questions.

23. Don’t think the S3 is better, the S4 mini is better in my opinion ONLY if you can live with a smaller screen. If you can stretch to the ZR do it.

My last xperia didn’t have gorilla glass – I used screen protectors and after 18 months of use I sold it to a recycling company for the maximum stated value (so they regarded it's condition as perfect). Any phone with a large screen is more vulnerable to being broken than one with a small screen. Most days on the underground and on buses I see people with busted screens - usually S3s, S4s and iphones - but I guess this is because they are the most common phones.

24. The choice for me was this or the S4 mini – I prefer Sony phones though and the bigger screen was the deal breaker. You could wait for the new Nexus, maybe a month to go? This was my plan, but my network provider offered me an early upgrade to move to 4G and I couldn’t say no.

25. The phone is definitely worth it – I’m not mad on photography and am rooted, so can get around the storage issue. After that it has most of the really important flag ship stuff, the things that you need, rather than eye scrolling or the ability to take it swimming, and the user experience is great.