Upgrade to 5.0.2

Question

Dear Sony I am writing this in the very faint hope that someone at Sony might actually take notice of the feedback being provided by your customers.  It is a very faint hope indeed as Sony's track record in this space is extremely poor.  I am also posting this in this forum as Sony do not publish an email address or contact form for use on their website  -  I have attempted to contact Sony directly but they have not provided a means to do so. I have owned an Xperia Z1 for over 18 months now.  While this phone is generally good and provides the functionality one would expect from a smartphone, there have been a number of shortcomings.  These shortcomings might sound like minor details but to a business person who uses their phone very heavily for work purposes, these minor details amount to a large frustration and inconvenience.  Many of these shortcomings have been pointed out to Sony by myself and a number of other customers  -  the evidence for this can readily be found in the posts in this forum.  Many of these shortcomings have also been introduced by Sony as changes from their previous models of smartphone and, in some cases, with upgrades provided to the Xperia Z1. The evidence to date is that Sony is not interested in the feedback of its customers and continues to make decisions on the functionality, capability and useability of their devices without consultant or consideration of their user community. The issues I have with the Xperia Z1 are:synchronisation of calendar items from Outlook using PC Companion does not correctly manage the timezone parameter of the items resulting in calendar entries on the phone being inaccurate.  This synchronisation is something that Sony has been successful with in the past with other devices but refuses to even acknowledge it is an issue and occurs with PC Companion and the Xperia Z1.  No, in my work environment it is not appropriate for me to synchronise my calendar via Google.synchronisation of contact items from Outlook using PC Companion makes an absolute mess of the contact details on the phone.  It does not correctly map the contact item fields and provides no mechanism for correcting the mapping.  Synchronisation of Outlook contacts to Google contacts is similarly flawed.  To ensure accuracy and consistency in my contacts I now save any changed contacts from Outlook as a vcf file and then import them individually into my Gmail account.  Cumbersome and time consuming but at least then I have reasonably accurate details in my Xperia (some fields are still not mapped correctly  -  e.g. Email Home field is imported as Email Other).  This synchronisation is something that Sony has been successful with in the past with other devices but refuses to even acknowledge it is an issue and occurs with PC Companion and the Xperia Z1.Inability to change the display order of contacts when using the Groups view.  In the all contacts view, you can select the display order preference (by first name; by last name) but you cannot do this when viewing contacts in a Group  -  they are sorted by first name and this cannot be changed.Inability to apply a ring tone to a group of contacts.  You have to apply a separate ring tone to each individual contact.  Sony even acknowledged that this capability was deliberately and knowingly removed.  This has been raised a number of times with Sony and yet they choose to ignore this functionality even though all of their competitors provide it. I recently upgraded my Xperia to 5.0.2.  This is a move I now regret.  Sony introduced a large number of changes in the upgrade that I have no choice but to accept and a number of these changes has directly impacted on the useability of the interface.I display the clock on the home screen by using a widget.  Sony has changed the display format from hh:mm to <bold>hh<normal>mm.  Sure, it's only a small thing but I don't like it and want to change it back to using a consistent font on all digits separated by a colon:.  I can change the format for the clock which displays on the lock screen but not the clock that is on the home screen through the widget.The update removed the individual ringtones I had applied to selected contacts.  Since I can't apply ringtones by group, it is rather a time-consuming process to go through and apply the ringtones again.The update changed the widgets/apps I have by adding the Google search bar to my home screen.  If I wanted the search bar on my home screen I would have put it there thank-you.I have one screen with a series of shortcuts to the phone numbers of the contacts I interact with the most.  I created the shortcuts using one of the standard widgets on offer on the phone.  The shortcut presents on the screen with the photo of the person from their contact record.  Upon selection of a shortcut, the person's phone contact details would display using about 1/3 of the screen (home phone, mobile phone, work phone) and I could then select the number I wanted to call.  The upgrade changed the behaviour of these shortcuts.  Now when I select a shortcut it uses 3/4 of the screen and provides the entire contact details.  Of the details displayed, the top half is taken up by a greyed-out view of the contact's photo.  The bottom half shows one phone number, one email and the postal address.  If I want more details I have to scroll up and then select the "See all" option.  Given that the majority of the time that I am using the shortcuts I am wanting to make a phone call to the person, I no longer have immediate access to all of the phone numbers for the person.  Not only has Sony changed the way this shortcut functions, they have not provided an alternative or any way to customise the details displayed to achieve the same outcome as the previous capability.Prior to the upgrade, all alarms would display on the screen.  Now, if the phone is active at the time the alarm triggers, a notification appears at the top of the phone which needs to be selected and then the option to turn off or snooze the alarm is provided.  Given that the alarm is sounding and everyone in the office around me can hear it, why has Sony introduced an additional step to turning the alarm off?I am also experiencing the same issues that a number of people have posted on this forum about their phones following the upgrade.  This includes major increase in battery usage, even when the phone is idle; extended charging time; very noticeable lag in the presentation of icons on screen when moving between different screens/views/exiting apps; very noticeable lag in launching the camera application.I totally refute the suggestion being made by a moderator on this forum to simply give the phone a couple of days to bed in the upgrade and all will be good.  Really?  The upgraded OS includes learning algorithms which assess the usage patterns of the device and tailor the operating functions accordingly?  So the devices is going to "learn" how to work better after a couple of days of use?  Is this actually documented anywhere by Sony?  An operating system will only function in accordance with how its code has been written.  If the upgraded OS is going to improve then it must contain code that enables it to do so.  If it does actually contain this code then fantastic (however it has been a week and I am still waiting for my phone to "learn" to work better).  It it doesn't contain this code then don't insult your customers by telling us to wait a bit and it will get better.On the whole I have been reasonably satisfied with the Xperia Z1 as a smartphone.  It has done the majority of what I needed it to do and I have found ways to work around the things it doesn't do.  I have been very dissatisfied with the support that Sony provides to their customers.  My contract for my mobile service is up for renewal in the next couple of months which means I will be looking for a new smartphone.  One thing I can say for certainty is that it will NOT be a Sony.  While other smartphones have shortcomings as well, none of them impact my personal usage requirements as much as the Xperia Z1 does.  In addition, my experience with the support provided by other smartphone vendors is far superior to Sony.  Given the amount of competition within the smartphone market and the ease with which a customer can change between devices, I would have expected a vendor to be interested in meeting their customer's requirements and maintaining their business for the longer term. Regards Gary T.

Answer 1

If the mapping has been removed you can add it by doing the following, although, if you install went haywire this won't help you much at all.
to create an application extension mapping with the following:
executable: C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_isapi.dll
extension: .pt
limit verbs to GET, HEAD, POST
"check that files exist" should be unchecked
"Script engine" should be checked.