Many, many dropped calls since new - this is the worst phone I’ve ever owned. My 1989 car-mounted Motorola was waaaaaaay better than this, so where’s the progress in 14 years? I don’t care about texts, colour screens, cameras - dear marketing people, this is a phone, get it?

Worse than the lousy overpriced and oversold product is Sony’s (and Orange’s) attitude to service - the first guy I talked to at Orange had the same phone and told me he couldn’t wait for the contract to expire because it was garbage and “everyone knows it’s junk”. Then he refused to solve the problem, because I was supposed to take it to Sony. I did, and they offered a completely unacceptable warranty 2-week turnaround on a repair, for which they also said I’d probably get an invoice (user damage - untrue.)

Bottom line - it’s apparently OK for big manufacturers to rush out inferior incomplete and undeveloped products, and also OK for Orange blatantly to break UK contract law by trying to pass the warranty liability on to the manufacturer even though the end supplier of the goods is legally liable.

I’m an engineer - I understand the hardware in detail - but it appears to me that as “technology” moves on, Sony have lost sight of everything but profit; Real service and usability goes down the toilet, costs to the consumer spiral out of control, and monster corporations become so arrogant that they can easily afford to tell their customers to take a hike.

Very sad. All I wanted to do was making phone calls, but even that’s too complex, it seems to me. After the terrible customer service experience I had last week from Sony, I will purposefully never buy another of their products whatsoever, and I would support anyone else who takes the same angle. Please do not buy this phone, it’s close to useless and will drive you nuts, like it did me.

Credits: Dave