ICS on this phone is still horrible. - Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini, Mini Pro, Xperia Pro, A

I updated to 404, and kept it for a week. Now I'm back on GB and oh man it's so much better.
Why is ICS so freaking horrible on this phone?
Compared to GB, ICS is buggy, slow, unstable, unresponsive and prone to hang.
I don't know what you use your phone for, but with mine, I used to play games, browse the web, and listen to music, other than normal phone usage for calls and SMS.
The browser on ICS is pathetically slow and unstable compared to the one in Gingerbread. In GB, you could actually run 720p youtube videos in desktop mode page and it would actually work perfectly. If you do it on ICS you risk hanging your phone and having to remove the battery. Either that, or the browser either crashes or becomes extremely unresponsive to the point even haptic feedback on the back and home buttons becomes delayed. On certain complex desktop pages, swiping becomes unresponsive and responds up to a full second late. Try this on the youtube desktop page or any other big page. Also, the new ICS browser tends to close on it's own for no reason, and as far as I know, there is no way to go back to the home page using it. The only way is to open a new tab, go back to the tab page, close the old tab and switch to the new tab. On the old one all you have to do is simply close all tabs and the browser would automagically put you back to the home page.
Games used to run fairly well on GB but in ICS they are so much more laggy. Some games that were perfectly fluid and playable are choppy on ICS, for example, Wind Up Knight, Let's Golf 3 (which is unplayable), Asphalt 6. The Angry Bots tech demo ran well on GB but it lags like there is no tomorrow on ICS. Another game that used to work perfectly in GB is Riptide GP, after I updated to 404, the game tends to hang the phone after a while, requiring a battery removal.
Other than this, the ICS update has several bugs including malfunctioning led notifications, no compass in google maps (this basically renders google maps unusable), and general clunky feel when scrolling through homescreens, when in GB the whole thing was smooth as silk. Even using a live wallpaper couldn't make the phone slow on GB, while on ICS it looks like even moving a bunch of icons is too much for this phone to handle.
Sure, ICS adds some eye candy such as the NXT theme which I really like, an animation for screen rotation, but I'd rather have a functional phone than a pretty but slow, clunky, unstable phone.
Again, I have no idea why you guys love ICS so much, GB is a lot better in every way imaginable, and as an added bonus, you can use all the Xperia S stuff on it without any problem, including the beautiful new music player.
ICS is simply a slow clunky mess which barely works. I'd love to know why you think it's better than GB.

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not true .. it is laggy because it runs on 1ghz .. imagine if ur phone had 600mhz .. laggy as hell but weirdly htc desire c ... can run ics
be lucky that sony actually updated ur xperia ray unlike scamsung they didnt update the galaxy s to ics because its specs cant handle it but it has same specs as our ray
hope u understandd

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This is the reason Sony wont provide more updates when they see such threads.....
Remember what they did to XPeria Play users...?
Sony released a Beta ICS for Xperia play and all users started complaining games are laggy !!, it sucks!!, ICS is fail!!... the end result was Sony cancelled ICS for Play..

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You are wrong ics runs super smooth on galaxy ace 800mhz older gen cpu

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jjdoctor said:
This is the reason Sony wont provide more updates when they see such threads.....
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You are wrong.
The user has every right in the world to complain if something doesn't work properly. I don't think the users complaining has anything to do with Play not receiving ICS.
ICS on Ray is slow and it is much worse than Gingerbread for whatever reason. Maybe our phone is not powerful enough to run ICS in the first place?
Also, I would have preferred an update to Gingerbread with all the Xperia S stuff and gingerbread 2.3.7 to this ICS which is exactly the same as gingerbread for the most part, only much slower and buggy.
A smartphone should be all about ease of use, if I have to resort to modding and overclocking to get the damn thing running at an acceptable level of performance, there has to be something very wrong with it.

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MarkMRL said:
ICS on Ray is slow and it is much worse than Gingerbread for whatever reason.
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Sony did offer an explanation for this: ICS was made for a dual core phone with 1 GB RAM
although ICS is new and compelling in many ways, we would like all of our users to make an informed decision when selecting what Android™ software to use. We are actually proud to say that our Gingerbread software is very stable and has great performance, so it’s not a bad idea to stay on this release. Ice Cream Sandwich is more intensive, for example in terms of resource usage.
When it comes to ICS, it’s a major upgrade of Android™, and there are a lot of things that have changed compared to the Gingerbread release. Some of these changes affect the performance and stability of the system, for example by using more CPU power and RAM. ICS was developed with Galaxy Nexus in mind, which is based on a TI platform with dual-core processor and 1GB RAM
http://developer.sonymobile.com/wp/...nical-differences-between-gingerbread-and-ics

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Phone is phone
Game console is game console
Phone is not a game console, and you would not get same experience....ever.
ICS is overall much better and functional than GB. Who wants to use 3.3" display for gaming has some serious mental problems :banghead:

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Try custom ROMs
I have SE Xperia Ray and try almost all options (rooted/unrooted with custom ROMs or not) sincerely Stock firmware a little laggy in browser or then multitasking particularlry at version 4.03 BUT at 4.04 i see it a big difference in smoothness the OS is much stable. The big problem now is 512 RAM, problem until you root your phone and install custom ROM (you need to unlock bootloader without loosing DRM data) delete aplications who work in backround you really didn't need them like update, livemanager I was very happy when i unninstaled Gmaps that all time worked in background even if GPS off, and now I use Igo for GPS Navigation. Now I have KA20.2 ROM and I can you assure the phone are so smooth and stable. My advice: root your phone, unlock bootlader with a safe method ( I used S1) a install a custom ROM, here on XDA you may found so many nice performing ROMs, and of course remove useless aplication who work in backround and eat your precious RAM. And of course before you unlock bootloader and root the phone, install cwm, read the guides, exists a risk, you know so you need to be informed how to unlock bootloader, root your phone, use fastboot and flashboot mode, of course in the case you never rooted a phone.
Best regards.

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YMMV
On my device I didn't encounter any bugs, lags or poor performance with the ICS.
It's stable, runs smoothly and has the same battery life I had with BG.
One can't say for a fact the ICS don't run well on this device, since other people have different experience with it. A person my note his personal experience - and it's just fine to do so!

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costicladk said:
I have SE Xperia Ray and try almost all options (rooted/unrooted with custom ROMs or not) sincerely Stock firmware a little laggy in browser or then multitasking particularlry at version 4.03 BUT at 4.04 i see it a big difference in smoothness the OS is much stable. The big problem now is 512 RAM, problem until you root your phone and install custom ROM (you need to unlock bootloader without loosing DRM data) delete aplications who work in backround you really didn't need them like update, livemanager I was very happy when i unninstaled Gmaps that all time worked in background even if GPS off, and now I use Igo for GPS Navigation. Now I have KA20.2 ROM and I can you assure the phone are so smooth and stable. My advice: root your phone, unlock bootlader with a safe method ( I used S1) a install a custom ROM, here on XDA you may found so many nice performing ROMs, and of course remove useless aplication who work in backround and eat your precious RAM. And of course before you unlock bootloader and root the phone, install cwm, read the guides, exists a risk, you know so you need to be informed how to unlock bootloader, root your phone, use fastboot and flashboot mode, of course in the case you never rooted a phone.
Best regards.
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Where i can find i go navigation? it's free?

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play games on ICS? ahaha you make me laugh. small screen but still eager to play games? LOL. go get Xperia Play mate, it build for gamers. i feel sorry for you then. GB is history for me. you'll never move forward if you keep looking back. neway, enjoy your phone mate

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@MarkMRL: That's been my experience too, though I don't play games.
I haven't tried the latest ICS though, which people report as being much better.
I moved to CM7.2 - it's very fast, with lots of great features the stock ROM doesn't have.
At the end of the day use what you're happy with

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ICS is not buggy but it needs time.
Ok so 1.ICS is better looking cause gingerbread is a pain to ur eyes
2. Its better optimized than gb games are slightly better
3. It is not just for non rooted phones. Like it needs lots of optimiztion. Cuz stock one ahs lot of procceses and u have only 50mb ram free at all time so thats why is laggy. But if you supercharge or smurph out you ray-bam its perfeckt
I have 130 apps lots of procceses running at backround 5 HD games i play and i still
have 120 mb free ram so.. you have wrong thoughts about ics on ray...

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Hey man I was in the same boat as you, when I first upgraded to ice I asked myself WTF is this **** and I really hated it, it was slow as hell and laggy but you got to know that developers know a lot more than you and that everything happens for a reason. Sorry but you come across asa huge cry baby
A few weeks back I was almost in the same mind set as you are in right now, I thought gingerbread was the best and ics was just crap but boy was I wrong
follow these steps and il bet you'l make another thread about why you love ics this time
1. Backup all your data, contacts. Msgs and pics
2. Do a factory reset/full wipe
3. Use the seus/pc companion and do a "repair"
NOW YOUR PHONE SHOULD BE COMPLETE STOCK MODE
4. Root the phone
5. Go to developer options, uncheck "dont keep apps" and "limit background processes" remember UNCHECK
6. Change window&transistion animations to .5
7. Use se tweaker to get cwm
8. Use hansip87s system ui and framework mod smooth scrolling thing (this makes some neat changes and adds notification and control and status widgets to the notification panel and you dont have to use the stupid status widget and the lame control buttons
9. There are some build prop edits /hacks thread where I saw the code for faster UI and scrolling and smoother transistions
10. If you want to use some of the awesome ROMS here by the awesome devs
11. Delete this thread
12. ??????????????
13. PROFIT!!
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I bet you your device will be faster and better than gb now, also its not the end of the world so be patient sony will make it better with each update and please, if you want to game that much why did you buy a phone with a 3.3in screen bro? Pm me if u have any problems
Oh also use root explorer or any other app similar to uninstall the se bloatware crap, I always have 150-120 free RAM always now, plus ics seems to have ajdusted the internal memory a bit
Its better than gb (coming from someone who hated ics 2 weeks back)

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rikee said:
Phone is phone
Game console is game console
Phone is not a game console, and you would not get same experience....ever.
ICS is overall much better and functional than GB. Who wants to use 3.3" display for gaming has some serious mental problems :banghead:
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This is not a "phone", it's a smartphone. It should be able to run games and internet browser. And 3.3 inches is more than enough for those silly smartphone games. Every game I tried is perfectly playable and looking good too. I'm not a "smartphone gamer" (just the name makes me cringe), but I enjoy wasting some time with those little games every now and then (I also have a PSP, DS and PSVita by the way). It annoys me that I was able to play certain games before but not anymore.
The point is that I was able to do all of that when I bought it, but now I can't do it anymore.
Icel.me said:
YMMV
On my device I didn't encounter any bugs, lags or poor performance with the ICS.
It's stable, runs smoothly and has the same battery life I had with BG.
One can't say for a fact the ICS don't run well on this device, since other people have different experience with it. A person my note his personal experience - and it's just fine to do so!
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Are you telling me your Ray has fully functional led notification and compass in google maps? Or that you can watch 720p youtube videos in the browser (or equivalent heavy browsing) without the crappy thing slowing down to a crawl or locking up entirely?
And no, I'm not crying I'm just stating facts.
Also, firefrenzy, that's exactly what I did when I updated to 404. I know all there is to know when it comes to installing stuff, I have unlocked bootloader and installed a stock kernel with CWM I found on this board, and also supercharged to 100%. Still horrible. I haven't tried ICS custom roms yet.

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MarkMRL said:
Are you telling me your Ray has fully functional led notification and compass in google maps? Or that you can watch 720p youtube videos in the browser (or equivalent heavy browsing) without the crappy thing slowing down to a crawl or locking up entirely?
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i dont know about the compass in the maps because i dont use the google maps ever, but i have no problems with the led notification or lag when playing hd video through browser, i have multiple tabs, of xda developers and another bodybuilding forum tabs and im using whatsapp messenger and normal messenger with my earphones plugged in listening to music altogeather at once on an almost daily basis and im having no problems, sure all that is slurping away my battery but that is understandable, only issue i had was i could not charge the phone when "switched off" the phone used to go into a bootloop, but the awesome people here fixed that too
Also, firefrenzy, that's exactly what I did when I updated to 404. I know all there is to know when it comes to installing stuff, I have unlocked bootloader and installed a stock kernel with CWM I found on this board, and also supercharged to 100%. Still horrible. I haven't tried ICS custom roms yet.
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BRO TAKE OFF ALL THAT STUFF,CLEAR ALL CACHE AND DATA AND START OVER FROM STOCK, ICS IS BETTER THAT WAY
AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN UPGRADED TO 4.0.4, SE'S OFFICIAL IS STILL 4.0.3

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ICS was smooth for me & it's smoother now i'm on JJ's Hybrid ROM.

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Try a custom rom...

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Run on 4.0.4 Original rooted with all bloat remove, including all FB stuff. It runns realy good. Sure get a redraw some times after surfing on some heavy sites or a long driveing session with waze. But in may normal daily use, read e-mail, check calander and make phone calls it runs realy well and lag free.
But the Sony dailer is crap, I use exDailer & Contacts, much better and faster.

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This toic should be moved to general. Unless it helps developers in some way which i have a hard time believing.
Sent from my Xperia ray using xda premium