Android 4.0 Upgrade For Sony Xperia Smartphones Opens a Pandora Box

First time accepted submitter ctrl-alt-canc writes "The udpdate to Android ICS offered for free by Sony to the Xperia smarphone users has caused plenty of troubles. Not only the decision by Sony of not updating Xperia Play phones to ICS caused rage among customers, but those who were lucky to get an upgrade for their smartphones discovered that WiFi connection did not work anymore. Up to now, the only suggestion proposed by Sony to fix the problem is to turn off the encryption, and reboot the smartphone and the access point."

Comments

News at nine

[slack_justyb]

Sony sucks at proper software upgrades.

The real problem is that Sony totally blew at testing the WPA stack before release. This isn't altogether hard to fix, but it's time that could be taken away from their next great phone they want you to buy. Android vendors are hit and miss on this upgrade thing. Some vendors are really amazing at providing updates and some just blow. Being able to root one's phone is the only real salvation. So I don't think this deserves the hype to author is putting into this, Sony sucks, is there anyone of us surprised by this? Will they fix it? Who knows, maybe, however this is yet another reminder that this mobile stuff is still pretty new shit. Tread with caution.

Re:News at nine

[thegarbz]

Indeed, it's not just Sony, and this is one real benefit Apple has. Control over the one device and the software roll-out provide for a consistent upgrade experience. Also because Apple have a centralised user base (i.e. one upgrade that doesn't work will likely piss off ALL their customers) they have more incentive to test upgrades properly.

My big stink was still with Samsung. The Galaxy S was a wonderful bit of hardware in its time, but Android ran on it so slowly that some apps were thought to have crashed by the system. The problem was identified really early on in the 2.1 releases by xda-developers who offered a quick fix (they called it the lag-fix). It was a poor choice of a file system and a poor kernel drivers for it. The fix was as easy as converting the system to ext3. Yet Samsung rolled out 2.2 and it was still slow, 2.3 and it was still slow, 2.4 and it was better but still slow compared to the xda fix.

The phone ran amazingly with Cyanogen mod, and frankly the only reason I would buy from Samsung again is that the hardware has been great and the bootloaders aren't locked. Actually quite the opposite they must have one of the most easy to flash phones out there.

Re:Not Unexpected

[icebike]

This _is_ Sony, right?... Let's see... rootkits, Playstation network security problems... Nope, not surprised.

Its not Sony's fault. (Well, its no ONLY Sony's fault).

This is a long standing problem with Android and certain wifi chip sets and ICS. It first reared its head in the Nook first edition
a long time ago, then it disappeared for quite a while only to come back with a vengeance with ICS.

Simply google the words: connecting authenticating obtaining ip loop
  and you will see this is common to a LOT of Android handsets and tablets.

Google search click here.

The entire flagship HTC One line has similar problems. Samsung has the same problem, as does ZTE, Achros, Huawei and several others.
Some of these vendors (HTC) have promised fixes (and all have failed to deliver as best as I can tell).

If you fiddle with it long enough it will connect, eventually. Often rebooting your router will work, but you can't always do that.

Often connecting to your neighbor's "guest" network will work, and then subsequently reconnecting to your own network will also work fine.
(especially if said guest account is an open network with no encryption).

Its never a problem of a bad password. Its not something you can fix with a static IP.
The problem is in the actual authentication layer of the wifi connection, before it even gets around to asking for an IP Address.
Seems to affect 802.11G routers more than others. Its not specific to certain router brands.

I've alogcated my self into a stupor and dug thru some of the opensource code.
The only thing I can see is that it appears some token is supposed to be incremented by the handset with each authentication attempt, and it is not
being incremented, so the router disconnects the client. But so much of wpa_suplicant is running in binary blobs that the end user is at a
serious disadvantage trying to dig through this stuff.

I can induce this error at will on my HTC One X, and I can recover from it by simply connecting to an unprotected wifi "guest" account
near by, then wait 30 seconds, and re-connect to my wpa2 secured router. I also solved it by running a spare router with no security
and leaving the router unconnected to anything. I use this for connection, wait 30 seconds, then reconnect to my home router.

Its a major pain. But its not SONY's fault, I suspect its Google's fault or the wifi chipset manufacturer's fault.