Ics on ray: its good :)

[kauvio]

I am on US global and the update is here.
I was a little hesitant in upgrading since there was that developer post cautioning drop in performance.. But really i think they are just playing safe in anticipating negative feedback

After the upgrade you still have that smooth feel in unlocking and scrolling your homescreen...there is no fps cap to it. It lags only a little bit compared to gingerbread.

No battery problems. Pretty much the same in gb.

Call log and dial pad are now on the same screen contacts and everything loads up quickly...no different than in gb

New themes from sony but no new ringtones that im aware of

Camera ui has improved in terms of the icons loading faster and they are a little bigger to touch...no more grey shading blocking your view

So i dont regret the update, nor feeling the need to go back gb. Ics is great in terms of navigating through the settings, and when the volume bar comes up you can touch it to adjust it instead of having to keep on pressing the volume rocker

Ray users would be happy with the upgrade simply because i think most of us are not power users with this little phone. Everything essential still gets done quickly. But just to say something bad i think google map and navigstion loads noticeably slower...but map never was a comfortable app in the first place in my opinion...googles fault

So if anyone is trying to decide...i'd say dont worry about it and upgrade away! :hello:

 

[Cryssie]

Thanks!
I am in the Netherlands and I get a message that the update is available, but when I try to update it says not available. It's really weird.

Anyhow: I think I'll wait for 4.0.4 or something Give Sony time to iron out the crinkles.

 

[iamviveksri]

some one can tell when its coming to India please

Update:
http://talk.sonymobile.com/thread/3...log&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ics+blogpost

 

[rui-no-onna]

So if anyone is trying to decide...i'd say dont worry about it and upgrade away! :hello:

Very good to know. Think I'll upgrade my Ray over the weekend.

 

[iamviveksri]

yes the update is out and i have installed it/// for anyone having Ray all i can say is -- dont expect any fireworks... there are none

i used all apps to check if any appreciable improvement is there in any but sorry folks....

i know we have to upgrade but we have to do so only because gingerbread is obsolete.... sad that Ray developers have not incorporated any improvement- and there was a huge wish list i am sure

for eg i had expected T9 search in dialler but its not there. the generic music app is same. i had hoped notification bar will be customisable but no sir!

so go ahead and do it.... come back here to post your experience with the ice cream sandwich....

 

[rui-no-onna]

i used all apps to check if any appreciable improvement is there in any but sorry folks....

i know we have to upgrade but we have to do so only because gingerbread is obsolete.... sad that Ray developers have not incorporated any improvement- and there was a huge wish list i am sure

so go ahead and do it.... come back here to post your experience with the ice cream sandwich....

I'm not expecting performance improvements. I'm more concerned that performance would be significantly worse than Gingerbread. From what kauvio reports, it doesn't seem as if ICS slowed things down all that much. I've used Ice Cream Sandwich on my tablets and I found it to be pretty nice. The stock web browser is a lot nicer than the one in Gingerbread. I love Chrome Beta so hoping I'll be able to install it now when the Ray gets updated to ICS.

I'm surprised roll out seems to be going pretty quickly. I anticipated not getting the update until after a month. Heck, I had to wait 2 months to get Mango (WP7.5) on my Quantum (Microsoft did a *very* gradual rollout).

 

[rui-no-onna]

I guess the weekend came early for me. Couldn't wait so pulled the trigger on the ICS update. Experienced some initial lagginess after turning on the device but now, it appears to be running pretty smoothly.

Ran Passmark and results for 2D and 3D graphic tests were lower compared to Gingerbread. Perhaps due to ICS using some GPU cycles for UI hardware acceleration? Anyway, if you game on your Ray, it might not be a good idea to update. I've only used ICS on a tablet before so didn't know exactly what changes to expect on the smartphone. Happily, the ICS interface is a lot more intuitive and certainly feels more polished than Gingerbread. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the update.

 

[iamviveksri]

by the way, is there anyone whom we can send our comments/suggestions for improvement on ICS so that sony can implement in the next upgrade???

 

[rui-no-onna]

by the way, is there anyone whom we can send our comments/suggestions for improvement on ICS so that sony can implement in the next upgrade???

There are a few folks on this board who seem to work for Sony's mobile department.

This guy's been pretty nice and helpful:
http://androidforums.com/members/sam-sonyxperia.html

 

[Sam-SonyXperia]

There are a few folks on this board who seem to work for Sony's mobile department.

This guy's been pretty nice and helpful:
http://androidforums.com/members/sam-sonyxperia.html

Thanks anything we can do to help just let us know and we will do what we can.

 

[iamviveksri]

thanks for offering to help out
i was wondering if there is any place to post what we feel could be improvements to the Ray so that future versions can incorporate them

off the top of my mind comes automatic brightness control, t9 dialling in the phone app, fast reboot, to be able to answer a call by touching a button instead of swiping, customisable notification bar, gmail and talk icons to be of different color once some unread msg is there (or have the number of msgs like in the Message icon)

i am sure members can add lots if u give us a chance

 

[Sam-SonyXperia]

No problem, that's what we are here for. if there is not already a specific thread about it you could just make a new one specific to this topic. If you please just pm me a link so I can keep an eye on it and pass on any feedback.

 

[iamviveksri]

in the meantime i assume u have noted the requests made in previous post ! thanks

 

[Sam-SonyXperia]

Have done

 

[rui-no-onna]

off the top of my mind comes automatic brightness control

If this does get implemented, I do hope it can be made optional. The auto brightness on my Xperia Active drives me crazy (constant screen flickering) and unfortunately, there are only 2 options to avoid it - too dim or too bright. Well, 3 if you count rooting.

 

[androidfocus]

Updated my RAY also, looksbetter, and camera starts much faster!

 

[Sam-SonyXperia]

Thanks for the positive feedback, always nice to hear

 

[andyzot]

I've not updated yet (in the UK on O2) but am thinking about it.
I would hope there would be a way to remove some of the 'system app' that take up so much valuable and limited memory or be able to transfer them to the SD.
That is my only complaint about this phone and for me it's a big issue that could easily be solved.

 

[iamviveksri]

no sys app can be removed = sorry
it is forcing me to think of rooting the phone-- fear of bricking stops me

 

[parrapa]

I've not updated yet (in the UK on O2) but am thinking about it.

I dont seem to have the update available to me yet on 02 in the UK - is there any reason for this?

 

[Cryssie]

Okidoki!

So, I upgraded the day before yesterday and all in all I am quite pleased with it. Here are some of my pros and cons so far.

*new dock. I just thought the GB one was such an eyesore! This one is largely transparant and brings out the shape of the screen a lot better. The entire UI overhaul is an improvement imo.
*new gallery. Looks better, more functional and works a lot faster
*the ability to switch of apps! Halleluja, praise the Allmighty! The peformance manager was a dissappointment but if you root through your app settings, it turns out you can switch off a bunch of apps! Switching it off also hides it from the app tray. I used it to kill a load of useless bloatware and my RAM use is looking quite acceptable.

*scrolling in a browser is a lot slower and laggy. I switched to boat browser mini, which does it a lot better though.
*A too high resolution wallpaper makes swiping your homescreen lag.
*apps that are removed or switched off have the nasty tendency to not go away. It's bad enough that I cannot get rid of "Fun and Downloads" and that it is always running, but when I tell it to quietly sit in it's corner I do not want to see it in my cache eating up my precious RAM.
Also, I uninstalled UEFA.com 4 times.
*screenshots are gone! That made me sad because I actually used it (Edit: found it! It is power+ volume down now)

For more I shall keep playing

 

[Sam-SonyXperia]

Thanks for the feedback, please do keep us updated on how it continues to run.

 

[Sam-SonyXperia]

I dont seem to have the update available to me yet on 02 in the UK - is there any reason for this?

Whilst the update differs depending on network, it also differs on individual builds. Please continue to be patient and it will be released for you soon.

 

[Srikanthan]

I'm on the Indian Vodafone Network. I upgraded to ICS few weeks back; the only major issue is contacts load too slowly. On an average it takes 3 to 4 seconds for the screen to appear.

The other thing I'm missing is taking a screen shot of the phone screen; this was available in earlier version, but I could not find this in ICS.

Rest I'm happy.

I am on US global and the update is here.
I was a little hesitant in upgrading since there was that developer post cautioning drop in performance.. But really i think they are just playing safe in anticipating negative feedback

After the upgrade you still have that smooth feel in unlocking and scrolling your homescreen...there is no fps cap to it. It lags only a little bit compared to gingerbread.

No battery problems. Pretty much the same in gb.

Call log and dial pad are now on the same screen contacts and everything loads up quickly...no different than in gb

New themes from sony but no new ringtones that im aware of

Camera ui has improved in terms of the icons loading faster and they are a little bigger to touch...no more grey shading blocking your view

So i dont regret the update, nor feeling the need to go back gb. Ics is great in terms of navigating through the settings, and when the volume bar comes up you can touch it to adjust it instead of having to keep on pressing the volume rocker

Ray users would be happy with the upgrade simply because i think most of us are not power users with this little phone. Everything essential still gets done quickly. But just to say something bad i think google map and navigstion loads noticeably slower...but map never was a comfortable app in the first place in my opinion...googles fault

So if anyone is trying to decide...i'd say dont worry about it and upgrade away! :hello:

 

[iamviveksri]

screen shot is available --- check other posts here!