Things that Suck About my Phone: A Review of the Xperia Z2

I have been meaning to write this review of the Xperia Z2 for a long, long time.  At this point, it is nearly irrelevant, with newer phones on the market, just in time for Christmas.

That leads me to my first diversion.  Gazelle.

Just throwing in an animal, in the middle of a phone review?  What are you smoking, Anne?

Gazelle is the name of a website!  A really sweet website, might I add. They buy your old phones off of you.  Then, they refurbish them, if necessary, and sell them to people who want to buy them.  Frequently, those people are located in middle-income countries, or sometimes even in North America and Europe.  (Affiliate links to Gazelle)

I don’t know about you, but my last phone is sitting in a box, on the off chance that I might all of a sudden desperately want something off of it, despite not having turned it on in four months.  I checked, my previous phone was so old it’s not worth a dime, but your phone might be!  Gazelle also takes trades on tablets and the like, so if you got a new one of those for Christmas, see if there is a second way for you to cash in on your new toy, by getting rid of your old one!

 

Now, on to things that Suck about the Xperia Z2, as observed by yours truly:

The Sounds

I am given to understand that this is an Android problem.  On the surface, it seems really awesome that you can set the sound that every single program makes.  Generally speaking, sure.  However, the major limitation is that you can only put your phone on noise, vibrate, or silent.  My last phone had four sound profile options, and you could make them do whatever your little heart desired.  There was even a setting called “loud” where you could pick the most obnoxious, long-lasting and highest volume settings.  Loud is perfect for, say, a day out skiing.  Not available on the Xperia Z2.

There are also times when I want the Facebook application to just shut right up, but still want to hear a text message, and only a text message or call.  Nothing else.

Not available on the Xperia Z2.  It’s always making noise, or the whole phone is on silent.  (For Facebook specifically, that’s an extremely annoying feature of the app, the others I can permanently mute, but that one is overriding the “no notifications” setting somehow.)

The Lights

There is a colour-coded flashing indicator light at the top of the phone.

“Great!” you think.  I thought so too.  That said, there’s no way to program which app flashes or doesn’t flash which light. Gchat is sometimes green, Facebook is mostly blue… but sometimes a text message is green, or was it that last email that flashed blue? Are the tweets blue or white, and which email account flashes which colour?

The lights get even worse at night. There’s no way to turn the lights off with the sleep setting!  I can be trying to fall asleep, with my phone face down on the night stand, and the flashing light casting its slow, pulsating, eerie light beyond the edge of the phone and seemingly right into my face.  Not cool, phone, not cool.

The Money Key

I’m a personal finance blogger.  I also work in business, talk about prices, and, in general, want access to the “$” symbol on my phone.  It’s not on the main keyboard.  It’s not on the secondary keyboard.  I have to hit shift twice.  I often find it faster to write out “dollars” with swype, than to get to the $.

It makes me think this phone was designed for teenagers, but marketed to adults.  A far, far cry from the blackberry interface, which I miss.

 

Those are the three things that most aggravate me about this phone. It can add dinosaurs to videos (unnecessary but entertaining), has a huge screen, and a relatively fast processor, those are all upsides, but the downsides grate on me.  Oh, and it was waterproof up to 1meter, until I dropped it.  There are a few other things that annoy me, maybe I will write about them another day?

What kind of phone do you have?  How much does Gazelle say they will give you for it?  It doesn’t look like they’re buying mine at the moment, but my spouse’s Samsung Galaxy S5 is worth $200.

 

Edit:   After I wrote this post, I got an email informing me that, until the end of January 2015, Buy.Gazelle.com has a sale on iPhone 4 and 4S phones.  Apparently, they sell like gangbusters to those of us who are frugally minded.  Functioning phones, for solid prices.  Check’em out!