Sony M4 Aqua Review- The Good , The Bad and The Faulty

[Anonymous]

I bought the M4 as a replacement for my iphone 4. Although I like Apple products I looked at the new iphones and they didnt seem that different than my old phone other than speed and screen size and I felt like trying some thing new.

My wife swapped her iPhone for a Z3 Compact and it seemed good. Nice screen, good camera, very customisable and waterproof. All for less than an Apple, so I thought I'd give it a go.

So, The Good - Good screen size and  feel to the phone. Easy set up and transfer of data using xperia exchange via my macbook. Even managed to sync Macbook calendars with phone via great Sunrise App from Playstore.

The Bad, although the phone only has 8Gb of internal memory I though this with a microSD card 16 Gb would be enough as my iPhone only had 8Gb in total. I dont store a great deal of music and photos on the phone as I download regularly. I was wrong though as the Lollipop Android operating system used aapprox half the 8Gb and the onboard Sony software approx 2Gb I was left with between 1.5 and 2Gb for apps as some wont download to SD cards. So I wasn't able to use all the apps I had on the iPhone. Now, The Faulty - only hours after setting up the phone and all the apps I could, an app update notification came through. The only problem? There wasn't sufficient memory space to update. So I removed all the apps I had added and updated the mandatory apps - a ball ache but it worked, I then had to reload the apps, along with the Sony apps, which had now taken up more memory and left only 1-1.5 gb for apps. The SD card cover keeps popping open when in your pocket. The phone started to say there was no SIM card and no sevice.

Three weeks into ownership and the phone has frozen while on charge, won't reboot and has had to go back to the factory for repair with consequent loss of data. Under 28 days and O2 insist on repair not replacement - poor service.

Conclusion - Nice looking phone, Nice features, but the memory is insufficient for the operating system and software they have included on the phone. The compact Z3 would be better if you can live with a smaller screen. Will I stick with Sony for 2 Years like i did Apple?- the jury is out.

[MI5]

The small capacity "cheap" android phones are best avoided, tbh. The flagship phones, even 3 year old ones, are much better buys that an up to date small capacity phone.
I assume you have tried the app called "apps2sd" to see if any others can be moved away from the internal storage?

[jonsie]

Good honest review and based on your experience not a phone I would be recommending.

[Cleoriff]

I bet your wife will enjoy her Z3 compact more than your M4? Thanks for your review though. Worth remembering..

[MI5]

Z3 compact is one of the best ones.

[viridis]

Now I love Sony phones, hands down they're great.........




........ as long as the letter following the word "Xperia" is Z
All the others (possibly excluding T) are pants and I would never recommend one, I would always tell someone to cough up the extra 5er a month for high mid / flagships

[viridis]

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@MI5 wrote:
Z3 compact is one of the best ones.

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And actually faster than the z3..

Because the 720p screen uses far less resources than 1080p, the extra processing power is free to be used for the system.

[MI5]

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@viridis wrote:
........ as long as the letter following the word "Xperia" is Z

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Totally - can you remember that piece of rubbish SP I had - Good grief !!!

[Toby]

A lovely review @Anonymous and welcome!

Its unfortunate that the 'bad' seemed to envelope the 'good' in this case, but this review will be really useful to everyone here.

Well done.