The UI!
We all know that the new Android version, the Jelly Bean 4.1 OS would be performing faster as expected. Sony did manage to bring that to their Xperia smartphones; however, the new update doesn't run as smoothly as the Nexus devices. This is due to the crappy UI of Sony Xperia handsets, the Timescape UI. You can see that, while moving your homescreen in an amount of speed, some widgets tend to still load up making the scrolling experience choppy.
You may also notice that adding applications to folders on the menua screen takes time to get use too, because folders tend to disappear while dragging icons on the homescreen. This is because that the UI makes room for you to move applications to where you want them to be, but what about while adding them to folders. I did have to try three times while adding apps to folders because they do disappear. I did have to move quickly to catch that folder still appearing on the menu screen to place apps in those folders. On the other hand... while dragging apps accros the menu screen can be a bit of a pain.
A folder automatically opens up while dragging your apps, making other apps to move out of the way a hard time to do and also rearranging apps slightly difficult. Note that this is only annoying if you are still getting use to the new UI of Sony like me. Rearranging widgets on the homescreen is also frustrating to do. Widgets take time on moving to the side while placing other widgets on top of them.
Animations on the homescreen can also be frustrating for me... when I do set up my phone's widgets the way I want it to be, I do want it to work fast with no other extra crap on the way like the animations. Animations can take up some little amount of time especially when removing widgets, I still had to wait for the stupid trash can to close before I can remove another widget. Like what I've said, I do like setting it up quickly and not take time because I don't care about the animations of the homescreen.
The SMS!
I type fast with my Xperia's keyboard, and I didn't have any slow down issues with the old ICS version. Right now, I'm having slow down issues while typing fast at the new JB SMS or keyboard. It seemed to perform slower. And also, the ability to copy and cut disappeared. Sony replaced it with the magnifying which is annoying that they've removed it. I send long SMS a lot to my friends, and sometimes when I want to edit something I just tap and hold and there are my options to do that. And one of my problems too is that if my message was too long, it would notify me asking me to allow or deny the sending... I sent out my first group message to all my friends sharing them greetings to them with some links to YouTube videos that I think they might like, and boom! message not sent, all of them! I had to resend them one by one always clicking on the "allow" button saying that SMS is too long. So I said to my self that this will be a problem for me.
The Camera!
I use to have great shots even in low light conditions, but now... I don't think the Exmor R is running anymore. Especially the video! The video frame rate decreased big time! From 30 FPS, it became 23 below. Remove the image stabilizer and it will rise up to 26. Maybe because that the old version's image stabilizer doesn't seem to take effect and Sony tried to improve that with the new update. Leaving a result of slower frame rate and poor video stabilization. And when you record at a quiet place, you can here that the video recorder recorded the system sound and also the sound it makes while autofocusing. The autofocus sound like the frames adjusting, you can here the clicking sound.
The New Sound Quality Of The Speaker!
The all new Clear Audio doesn't sound clear at all... in fact when it's enabled, it sounds more like the speaker is being covered by your palm. I'm not using the Clear Audio nor in headset use.
Data Transferring From PC to Phone!
Transferring data from PC to my Xperia S takes so long to finsih now. The same thing happened with my Xperia Mini Pro after being updated to ICS, luckily the Xperia Mini Pro had a different connectivity mode which alows faster transferring (the MSC mode) but since the Xperia S only has an internatl storage, this mode isn't available for it. It took me an hour to copy 1.3GB file into my Xperia S. The old ICS version of Xperia S didn't had this issue.
Battery!
Battery still drains fast even with new update but at least the phone doesn't heat up that much anymore.
Multi-tasking!
There were rumors about the new features of the up coming JB update for Xperia S and one of them was to have more RAM space for better multi-tasking. Apparently, whenever you launch an app... let's say a game for example, when you exit to the homescreen you can see that widgets load up again. This is only occurs when the phone has reached its limit of running apps. The phone closes all apps to run the current app normally and RAM space is low. I use to have 400+MB of RAM, now it's only 300 and below. Turned out that the new update had some big file sized apps installed. I'd plan on rooting my Xperia S and up some phone memory space. Also removing the other Browser app beacause there are 2 system browsers and they are eating up space.
Note that I had to factory reset my Xperia S after installing the new JB update to really see how the update performs when phone has no other files to interrupt.
Let us all hope that Sony will update our Xperia S with Android 4.2 to fix all these problems. If not 4.2, a minor update that fixes the problems.
