I'm using an xperia ray on the 2degrees network in New Zealand.
On my old phone, a huawei ideos u8150, I get perfect broadband speeds and a constant connection when usig hspa and 3g. Using the same sim, exact same network and identical apn settings (which I've checked several times) and in exactly the same location I can't get online very often and when I can it's unusably slow besides an occasional brief flash of speed.
The weird thing is the Ray shows full bars and a 3G logo as though I should have no problems. That's most of the time. Much of the time I just have full bars with a little R as the 3G seems to dissapear even though data is turned on. The readout will flick between full bars, no bars whatsoever, and full bars with a 3g or an H symbol. When I first got the phone it spent most of it's time saying there was no network at all. I'm not sure what changed but it seems to be better now.
Secondly, when making calls it says "connecting" for quite some time before it actually connects. Even then the call is often mangled and this is showing full bars.
Intitially I thought it would be an APN settings issue, but after contacting my carrier and checking my old phone settings I can rule that out. Secondly I thought it could be a sim card issue, but swapping the sim back and forth from my old phone yields the same results: perfect connection vs useless connection.
So what with my initial disconnect issues and current connection issues it seems like my device has a faulty antennae or at least buggy network drivers or something.
I have a few questions:
Should I be treating this as normal? Ie. do SE phones have weak antennae?
Is this a known defect on some Rays, or is it unusual?
My phone is a chinese model (parallel import is legal here). Would the fact it's designed for the chinese market have meant there are hardware differences which are messing with my connectivity?
Thanks in advance for any help. For now I will probably go back to using my old phone. If I can't get a quick fix here I'll try returning the phone under warranty.
