Sony Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact announced at IFA

TheChevron

billbond4 wrote: »

Update to the latest version of the Album app (use the Update Center App to do it), and in that there is a setting to hide pictures

When I go to the update centre it says I am up to date.

Where is this setting in the album app that I can change?

billbond4

So when you open the album app and you goto home and you see all your photos, scroll down to a photo you dont want , select it and on the ... select hide
If you goto folder view you could select photos in a particular folder and hide them that way also

cormie

I was hoping that wasn't the only solution, that's far too tedious, there doesn't see to be an option to hide an actual folder, just photos within a folder, if a folder has 1,000's of photos that will take forever, and as soon as the photo is populated again, the new photos will show and you'll have to keep doing it

TheChevron

billbond4 wrote: »

So when you open the album app and you goto home and you see all your photos, scroll down to a photo you dont want , select it and on the ... select hide
If you goto folder view you could select photos in a particular folder and hide them that way also

Thanks for the effort, but that's not what I was looking for. I would have to go in and hide images every time I got a viber or whatsapp photo message. I don't know why they show up by default and there is no way to stop them, except retrospectively. Really bad feature flaw imo.

On all other phones, when you enter the gallery, it just brings up the photos you have taken with your camera and not every piece of crap from the phone.

cormie

Probably best just to get another album app I guess? I have the same issue and don't want every photo showing up.

Also I notice photos from the camera aren't saved to /camera like before, but seen to be saved to 100Android or something.

Also with the walkman app, if you are playing a song and keep it playing while opening another app, exiting out of the walkman app and go back to open the walkman app to change song, pressing back will exit out of the app again rather than going "up" a folder and there doesn't seem to be any way to go to the containing folder of the folder/files you're viewing.

timetogo

TheChevron wrote: »

Cons:
The screen is not as clear.
The gallery is terrible - all your photos show up from every location in the phone, not just the photos you have taken.
The Sony apps are a bit crap...and there are loads of them.
The keyboard is small and I find myself making frequent typos.
There is no way to get into the phone settings from the Quicksettings tab.
Notification sounds are very low.
Loudspeaker call volume very low.
Only 8 gig of Internal memory.

1: Can't help you with. The screen on mine is as good as an S5. Haven't had it beside any other top end phone.

2: Try Quickpic. You can Exclude / Hide folders.

3: You can uninstall many of the apps that came with the phone (well I could on mine). For those that can't be uninstalled they can be disabled. For those that can't be uninstalled / disabled I turn off Notifications in the App and hide the app using Nova Launcher. I found the Sony pretty free of bloat after I uninstalled the apps I didn't want. I've come from a Samsung though so I'm probably more used to my phone being stuffed full of crap.

4: Play Store - search for keyboard. Loads of them. I use Swiftkey. I've been using it for years. It's one of the first installs on any new phone.

5: Don't understand this. Swipe down. Go to Quick Settings, press Settings.

6 & 7: Can't help you with. I hadn't noticed it. Not because it doesn't exist but because I like my notifications quiet and when I'm on loudspeaker I'm in quiet areas so the volume hasn't bothered me.

8: Might be related to 3. My internal storage is 11.57Gb. I've a **** tonne of apps installed and have 4.96Gb internal free. I do use a SD card though. Maybe some apps automatically install some data to the SD card to leave some space free internally.

My phone was from Vodafone so I suppose uninstalling / disabling apps might be vendor controlled (most of the apps I couldn't uninstall were the Vodafone ones).


A tip I'd recommend any brand phone is to install an app like Nova Launcher. My reasons for this are
1: Allows me more space on the home screens as I can have a grid of icons of 5 X 4 (or more) rather than the 4 X 4.
2: You can turn off the app names on the home screens. I can recognise 100% all of my apps by their icon. Don't need to see their labels.
3: You can hide apps from the app drawer.
4: You can categorise apps into different tabs in the app drawer (e.g. I put all of my games into one tab so I don't see them when I'm scrolling through other apps).

I've attached a screenshot of one of my busier screens to show what I mean by 1 & 2 there.

cormie

Nice post timetogo, I remember installing a decent gallery app for someone on their tablet after doing a bit of research and remember being able to exclude folders etc too. I think it might be quickpic, I'll double check next time I'm with them

I'm using nova launcher too, does everything I need in the free version and is very versatile!

A few more little annoyances I've discovered:

• I use Dialer One as my phone app, when I get a missed call, it asks what app I want to hand it, I click dialer one and "always" but every missed call I get still asks the same thing
  
• I'm having callers say they can't hear me until I hold the bottom of the phone right next to my mouth, I've a habit of just letting it hang in line with the shape of my ear which pushes it out from my mouth, is this the background noise cancellation kicking in?
  
• When I take the phone away from my head, it doesn't light up the screen like it should and it takes me a while to hang up on somebody
  
• There doesn't seem to be an option for conference calls?
  
• On my old phone you could open the gallery through the camera, pinch out and you can see/delete photos and videos easy and it only showed files in the actual camera folder. It doesn't seem possible to get an overview of all media taken with the camera easily from within the camera app and you need to open "album" or other gallery app separate for this, does anyone know is this the case or am I missing something?

timetogo

cormie wrote: »

[*]I'm having callers say they can't hear me until I hold the bottom of the phone right next to my mouth, I've a habit of just letting it hang in line with the shape of my ear which pushes it out from my mouth, is this the background noise cancellation kicking in?

[*]When I take the phone away from my head, it doesn't light up the screen like it should and it takes me a while to hang up on somebody

I don't know about the other ones but these two are worrying. For the first give your phone to someone and get them to ring you so you can see what the other callers are talking about. I've never had somebody say they couldn't hear me.

If you can reproduce the problem with other people using your phone then I'd be thinking about taking it back to the shop.

For the second one, that doesn't happen on mine at all. I just made a call and waved my hand over the screen a few times. Screen goes blank immediately when my hand is over the sensor and lights up immediately when I take my hand away. That sounds like there's something wrong with yours.

If you take it back to the shop I'd recommend backing up & formatting first (it's a pain in the ass) but you'd have to do it anyway. It's worth formatting to rule out the software and see if the issues above go away. They probably won't but the guys in the repair will probably wipe your phone anyway so it's worthwhile you doing it in the off chance (5% probably) that it fixes those issues.


Edit: Actually Quickpic has one annoyance. It can't write to the SDCard since Google messed up the Android permissions so you can't delete pictures from some folders. It's a pain, but fine for giving to somebody when you just want them to see certain pictures.

billbond4

cormie wrote: »

I was hoping that wasn't the only solution, that's far too tedious, there doesn't see to be an option to hide an actual folder, just photos within a folder, if a folder has 1,000's of photos that will take forever, and as soon as the photo is populated again, the new photos will show and you'll have to keep doing it

Just select all when your in the folder

billbond4

5: Don't understand this. Swipe down. Go to Quick Settings, press Settings.
--->
Swipe down with TWO fingers and your in the quick settings, then click settings

BTW for notifications install Light Manager so you can set the LED to flash difference colours (and difference speeds ) for different notifications.

D'Peoples Voice

timetogo wrote: »

Edit: Actually Quickpic has one annoyance. It can't write to the SDCard since Google messed up the Android permissions so you can't delete pictures from some folders. It's a pain, but fine for giving to somebody when you just want them to see certain pictures.

Just to say that problem may soon be fixed...

Android 5.0 Makes SD Cards Great Again, Extends API To Allow Full Directory Access, Automatic MediaStore, And Improves Security

By the time I/O came around, Google acknowledged that KitKat's newly added Storage Access Framework still didn't offer enough range for apps to get their work done. With the release of the L Developer Preview, new APIs were added to allow apps to request access to directories owned by other providers. Now that Android 5.0 Lollipop has been finalized, these APIs have been improved and even offer more capabilities than before, and they do it in a very user-friendly and secure way.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/11/04/android-5-0-makes-sd-cards-great-again-extends-api-to-allow-full-directory-access-automatic-mediastore-and-improves-security/

cormie

timetogo wrote: »

I don't know about the other ones but these two are worrying. For the first give your phone to someone and get them to ring you so you can see what the other callers are talking about. I've never had somebody say they couldn't hear me.

If you can reproduce the problem with other people using your phone then I'd be thinking about taking it back to the shop.

For the second one, that doesn't happen on mine at all. I just made a call and waved my hand over the screen a few times. Screen goes blank immediately when my hand is over the sensor and lights up immediately when I take my hand away. That sounds like there's something wrong with yours.

If you take it back to the shop I'd recommend backing up & formatting first (it's a pain in the ass) but you'd have to do it anyway. It's worth formatting to rule out the software and see if the issues above go away. They probably won't but the guys in the repair will probably wipe your phone anyway so it's worthwhile you doing it in the off chance (5% probably) that it fixes those issues.


Edit: Actually Quickpic has one annoyance. It can't write to the SDCard since Google messed up the Android permissions so you can't delete pictures from some folders. It's a pain, but fine for giving to somebody when you just want them to see certain pictures.

I tried waving my hand over the screen and it doesn't really follow the movement of the screen with the blacking out I'll try give the phone to a friend and see how the volume is. I'm pretty sure my face isn't too abnormal

billbond4 wrote: »

Just select all when your in the folder

That still won't work I think, I imagine as soon as I get another viber/what's app image, it'll not be "hidden" as the solution above is only hiding the files, not folders they are in?

D'Peoples Voice wrote: »

Just to say that problem may soon be fixed...


http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/11/04/android-5-0-makes-sd-cards-great-again-extends-api-to-allow-full-directory-access-automatic-mediastore-and-improves-security/

Brilliant, any idea Z3C users can expect 5.0?

TheChevron

Quickpic is good but its not the answer.

For instance, if I gave my phone to someone to take a picture, if they go to look at the pic they took they press the image of the pic within the camera. This brings up the Sony album, and if the start flicking through photos they would get all the shíte.

You understand what I'm saying? Its a really bad flaw in the album app imo.

I hate that every time I hand my phone to someone to look at pics, I have to do a quick scan of it first and delete some messenger app photos.

billbond4

I think maybe an older version of Album app would suit you as it only looks in the DCIM folder (if memory serves me right)

quarryman

cormie wrote: »

Brilliant, any idea Z3C users can expect 5.0?

End of Q1 apparently so most likely March.

timetogo

TheChevron wrote: »

Quickpic is good but its not the answer.

For instance, if I gave my phone to someone to take a picture, if they go to look at the pic they took they press the image of the pic within the camera. This brings up the Sony album, and if the start flicking through photos they would get all the shíte.

You understand what I'm saying? Its a really bad flaw in the album app imo.

I hate that every time I hand my phone to someone to look at pics, I have to do a quick scan of it first and delete some messenger app photos.

Just had a quick play around with mine.

If you install the Google Camera app when you take a photo with that it only shows you the photos in it's folder so there's no chance of somebody going off to other folders.
It seems to take photos at the high resolutions too.

However I don't know how to make it the default camera app (when you press the physical button). If you press that the Sony app pops up. If you disable the Sony camera app then nothing happens when you press the button.

quarryman

AstraMonti wrote: »

I hate big cases, so I am using a casemate barely there, this one: http://www.case-mate.eu/devices/sony/xperia-z3/barely-there-case-for-sony-xperia-z3.html

I am also using a tempered glass protector front and back.

I'm using this one too but while it's quite low profile I doubt there will be much protection if I drop it. Which makes me wonder should I bother using it at all.

I'm tempted to get another slim case but maybe with grippier material.

Thephantomsmask

lucstar wrote: »

Thanks for help. All works fiine. My wife loves the z3 compact. She left iphone 4s. Z3C just perfect size and weight. What is annoying for me is the scren touch. Feeling of plastic wnen I tap something like empty under it. Myself I'm using galaxy s4, maybe that's why. All over nice speakers, good quality microphone, fast response on apps.
What music player do you recommend instead of Walkman? Bit hard to manage the music.
Also I've checked the wifi on baterry usage. Using stamina mode, but the wifi is always on, specially during the night. Is there an option to manage manually just wifi? I know I can use ultra mode but it will turn of the wifi totally.
Thanks

I had the WiFi issue, if you go into WiFi and advanced settings on the bottom right you can turn off "always scanning", I also turned off location based wifi and the sleep problem was fixed.

Notorious97

Three replaced my z3 with a new one tonight for me, mine just died last week very annoying.

OK stupid question time, can putting music on sd card crash phone? The charging cable I got with my phone won't charge for some reason so using a ps4 cable, works perfectly but can this do any harm to phone?

Reason I ask, I done the above plus installed an app or two for syncing iTunes to Android the day it died and now I'm paranoid any of the above is the cause haha

lucstar

Notorious97 wrote: »

1.Three replaced my z3 with a new one.
2.OK stupid question time, can putting music on sd card crash phone?
3.The charging cable I got with my phone won't charge for some reason so using a ps4 cable, works perfectly but can this do any harm to phone?

1. If three replaced your z3 with new one and still something goes wrong, I would simply claim it again under warranty.
2. What memory card you are using? Speed class. Maybe is to slow
3. Is it the cable only or the charger. Maybe try a different socket in your home. The same thing (warranty)

TheChevron

Another few issues someone might be able to help me with.

If I select a program to open something and click always, the next time it still asks me again.

I have auto brightness clicked, but it does nothing. I was lying in the bad last night, pitch black and the brightness was up fairly high, even with the auto brightness clicked.

Any ideas?

I'm having so many issues with this phone. If the battery wasn't gone to crap on my HTC One I would take it back in a heartbeat, even though the phone is 2 years older.

cormie

TheChevron wrote: »

Another few issues someone might be able to help me with.

If I select a program to open something and click always, the next time it still asks me again.

This is really annoying me too, I use "Dialer one" app instead of the stock phone app and every missed call or other phone operation I open it asks me what app to use :mad:

Notorious97

lucstar wrote: »

1. If three replaced your z3 with new one and still something goes wrong, I would simply claim it again under warranty.
2. What memory card you are using? Speed class. Maybe is to slow
3. Is it the cable only or the charger. Maybe try a different socket in your home. The same thing (warranty)

Thanks for the reply.

I am not sure on the memory card, it isn't a top of the range name on it, simply says sd card lol. It works fine just the day my phone died I had three hours before it put 40gbs of music on it using isyncr and it worked great. Just a bit paranoid!

Regarding the charger, it charged last night using the cable it came with, what I was doing was using the cable from my ps4 that charges the controller with the charger provided, again just worried in case a different cable affected the device.

sebcity

devnull wrote: »

I've managed to crack the back glas of mine, it has a weird crack with a curve in it, I don't remember dropping it but I do remember leaving the flashlight on for a while by accident, normally when I use it for any more than a few minutes it's really hot from the light.

But after leaving te flashlight on for 10 minutes it was really cool, so I suspect that it is cool because the heat is escaping due to the back, and the heat may have cracked the glass, the crack seems to be slowly widening as well which is not good.

Also the charger cover door no longer stays in position and holds in properly when pressed in, you can see it raised a little bit out of the slot a few sseconds after pushing it back in and it gradually works it's way out again.

Anyone have any recommendations for what I should do about the glass and the cover?

I also cracked the back glass on my Z3. It happened in my pocket, should have really seen it coming as the phone was warped to the extent it was rocking on a flat surface. I have been on to Sony, they are saying I need to send it off to be inspected by an engineer and will take 5-7 days to be examined. UGH.

devnull

Told me the same thing, but they also said if they deem that it is our of warranty they will repair it and send the bill before they send the phone back.

They will give me no idea of how much it will cost, so I'm a bit apprehensive about doing it, them reparing it and charging me a huge sum that I have no choice but to pay.

D'Peoples Voice

TheChevron wrote: »

If I select a program to open something and click always, the next time it still asks me again.

Does it happen with all apps or just some. This can sometimes be the app developer's fault.

TheChevron wrote: »

I have auto brightness clicked, but it does nothing. I was lying in the bad last night, pitch black and the brightness was up fairly high, even with the auto brightness clicked. Any ideas?

Have you tried a screen filter? I won't use a phone at night without one
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.haxor
It makes the screen darker but after a while you will feel the relief in your eyes.

cormie wrote: »

This is really annoying me too, I use "Dialer one" app instead of the stock phone app and every missed call or other phone operation I open it asks me what app to use :mad:

Okay, I've tried this on Moto X, same problem, so its a problem with the App developer, who unfortunately has stopped updating this app.
This is its successor...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doublegis.dialer
Pity, I prefer Dialer One myself

cormie

D'Peoples Voice wrote: »

Okay, I've tried this on Moto X, same problem, so its a problem with the App developer, who unfortunately has stopped updating this app.
This is its successor...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doublegis.dialer
Pity, I prefer Dialer One myself

Did you use Dialer One much? I really like it, particularly the T9 search, I see the gis one has the feature too and a number look up thing too, but Dialer one had a lot of customisation features and just did everything I needed. I'm always afraid to try new apps and fear they'll be more fancy icons and animations than functionality..

funnyclub

Just got the Z3 Compact myself. I've gone from a LG G3 to it and the main reason was size. I'm a cyclist and my last few phones were just too big to carry on me. I had the one plus one and then went to the LG G3. The other thing I like is the fact it water and dust proof. Handy when in your pocket of your jersey when cycling as the sweat can get on your phone.

I'm just getting used to it at the moment but I like it so far. I have been a little worried hearing about glass cracking etc.

With regards accessories I ordered a cheap tpu case which is doing the job. I have a screen protector on also. I ordered another case and a tempered glass protector which I'm waiting on. I also ordered carbon fibre effect skin for the back and a magnetic charger cable.

Hopefully I will be issue free.

lucstar

funnyclub wrote: »

Just got the Z3 Compact myself. I've gone from a LG G3 to it and the main reason was size. I'm a cyclist and my last few phones were just too big to carry on me. I had the one plus one and then went to the LG G3. The other thing I like is the fact it water and dust proof. Handy when in your pocket of your jersey when cycling as the sweat can get on your phone.

I'm just getting used to it at the moment but I like it so far. I have been a little worried hearing about glass cracking etc.

With regards accessories I ordered a cheap tpu case which is doing the job. I have a screen protector on also. I ordered another case and a tempered glass protector which I'm waiting on. I also ordered carbon fibre effect skin for the back and a magnetic charger cable.

Hopefully I will be issue free.

It's unbelievable how much extra money we have to spend to keep the handsets safe.
1. Screen protector or tempered glass
2. Back protector
3. Silicon or hard case cover
4. Magnetic cable
5. Insurance
6. Yiu can also get some apps you have to pay for
7.......
this is exactly what I have ordered for my wife's sony z3c...
The thing is, we usually order it for most our phones, unless there is metal back and usb charging port only
However.. this is the idea to make everyone happy
Hope all the gadgets we bought let us use the phone's long enough without any cracks. Enjoy your z3c

delly

I have a z3c over a week now and am really impressed. Regarding the screen brightness reduction, I used lux lite dash and it works really well once you spend some time setting preferences. It is very quick to adapt to changes in light.

Regarding cases, I've ordered the €4 ebay case that was referenced on the other thread. It's the silicone one with what looks like a stretched s on the back. Anyhow, someone said that they found the covered buttons hard to press, but I had the same issue with the same case when I had for my s3. To get around it, I just cut the gaps for the buttons with a Stanley knife and it worked fine. The case saved me many times when I had it for the s3, so hoping the same this time around.