Sony 1V - for very hot.
I've always been a fan of Sony phones.
Back in Secondary School, I had a Sony Ericsson W850i, pictured below, probably much to the annoyance of the teachers at the time because I developed a fondness for listening to music in class.
When the Ericsson W850i came to the end of its life, I moved to the W910. An equally capable and cool looking phone for the time, although it did lack the "party light" and other cool features of the W850i as phones began progressing towards soulless corporate data collection tools.
Between the W910 and 2021, I had many other phones including iPhones, Samsungs, Windows Phones and many others. In 2021, I got a Sony Xperia 1iii. Quite possibly one of the best phones I had ever. It fit perfectly in the hand, it had a headphone jack and customisable notification light, the camera was great and the battery just seemed to life forever too. It was genuinely indestructible, although not as indestructible as Nokias, lets be real.
I was therefore, extremely excited about upgrading to the Sony Xperia 1V in 2024. On paper at least, the 1V seemed to be the 1iii on steriods. It should have been an easy transition to move my data onto the new device, then live happily ever after until the upgrade cycle came around again.
That happened, for about a month. Then the 1V started having extreme heating issues and the battery would randomly drop from fully charged to 70% then 60% then 40% in barely any time at all. Before I could get any data off the device or figure out what the problem was, it died completely.
As one would expect, I consulted with the supplier who said they could send it back to Sony to repair - but they'd wipe all of my data. Not fantastic given I had business, legal and personal information on the device I needed to keep. Independent repair shops didn't inspire confidence either with prices ranging from £50 to £300.
I decided to wait and replace the battery myself, to see if that resolved the issue. A few house moves later, I finally got around to doing it.
Result? It worked! At least, kinda.
See, the device is powered on and working. It allows me to login, browse files and use apps even if it's displaying the wrong time but it's not charging despite all parts being fitted correctly. That's an issue because it needs charge to continue operating and for me to extract the relevant data.
The wider issue though is that it is still overheating.
To be clear -
- It's had a new battery.
- It's not been running for nearly 2 years.
- It was cold on boot up, had no wifi, no cellular and background processes were minimal.
Having browsed forums, reddit and the sony support site, this seems to be a regular issue. But I can't help but wonder why? How did the 1V go so drastically wrong when its predecessor was an absolute dream?
At this point, I don't know but I intend to do some more digging because I still need my data from the device and it would be an interesting to find out exactly why it's overheating.
On that note, keep a look out for Sony 1V - For Very Hot part two where I'll hopefully have an update on that subject.
