Z5 Dual E6683 - 2 Problems

[Ricky1234612]

Greetings,

I realised that this model isn't on the list but Z5 is the closest phone so, Sorry in advance for not posting in the Correct board that I cannot find.

Anyway, I've bought this phone from Hong Kong last week and I've only just started using this phone today but there are already 2 major problems that I can't resolve.

1-
At first this phone runs very smoothly without any problem at all and I was actually very happy and excited, until after I've started to install apps into it. My last phone is a Samsung Galaxy S3 so it was very easy to have all my apps transferred to my new phone. In fact, I don't think there was any option to not transfer all the apps over to my new Z5 Dual.
Anyway, after I've customised my new phone in various ways within Settings, reboots started to randomly occur. This occurred maybe 1-2 hours after I've first set the language, chose a wifi network and logged in with a Google account (I'll be referring this as the "phone's activation sequence").
The troublesome fact of this problem is that it doesn't seem to resolve on it's own because it keeps on happening at an increased rate. How? Well, the second time that this happened was within 1 hour after the first reboot, and the 3rd time happened even sooner.
After about 7 random reboots or so, I only get a few minutes to use the phone before I click/touch/tap on something and the phone reboots again.

For example, when I launch the Camera app, as soon as I touch the app icon, the phone's screen freezes and won't respond to anything. After about 10 seconds, the phone's screen turns black and 2 seconds later, the LED notification light blinks in red for a few times then the phone starts it's boot-up sequence.
This problem isn't restricted to launching the Camera app, of course, because it also happened when I was trying to change something in the Settings app or even when I was simply trying to launch the Settings app.

I've tried a factory restore but the same problem occurred again when I was tried to login with my Google account while I was still at the "Phone's Activation Sequence". (In more detail, I left my phone alone when I was about to login, then came back to it after about 10 minutes and the reboot problem happened right after I turned the screen on and touch the screen.) And yes, it didn't stop there and I'm currently stuck at where I was before I did the factory restore.



2-
The second problem is that I can't seem to get the Sony PC Companion application to work. I've tried reinstalling without restart, uninstall-restart-install, uninstall-restart-install-restart.
I've even redownloaded this application from HK's Sony site and even used Traditional Chinese as the language.
Right now, this is what I see: (Screenshots were taken and uploaded to tinypic, which is an online photo hosting service)
1- I've installed those sub-apps already: http://i67.tinypic.com/30uze4m.jpg
2- When I clicked on Support Zone, it doesn't show anything options: http://i66.tinypic.com/24v19xg.jpg



Please help

Regards,
Ricky

[Uliwooly]

@Ricky1234612

remove both SIM and SD cards and check if you encounter the same problem

also remove both SIM and SD cards > boot on safe mode and report back

[Uliwooly]

@Ricky1234612

As for the second issue, do you have any antivirus or firewall? which windows version do you have? do you have the lastest JAVA?

[Ricky1234612]

@uliwooly

Hey, thanks for your replies.

1-

I've just tried to use the phone in safe mode for a few times but the same restart problem still happens randomly (when I was adding another finger for the fingerprint-unlock feature or when I tried launching the default Radio app).

I've tried using the phone in normal mode afterwards but it the problem presisted..

As for removing the SIM and SD card, I haven't put any in ever since I received it.

2-

I'm using Avast as my AV and firewall. So, I've tried reinstalling PC companion and use it while the shields from Avast were disabled but PC Companion still gave me the blank page (as seen in the second screenshot of my first post).

I'm currently using Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit with an i5 3570 CPU and 16 GB RAM. Since PC companion seems to be installed on my OS drive, it's on an SSD with 85 GB free space.

I'm also using the latest version of Java.

There are more things I can try, right? I want the solution called "returning it back to where I bought it" to be my last resort, so if there's anything that I can still try, I'll try it.

Regards,

Ricky

Edit:
Just tried using the phone with Google Play Service disabled and then with Wifi disabled. Both didn't work.

[Uliwooly]

@Ricky1234612

could you use a different computer?

[Ricky1234612]

Forgot to update my post but I've tried that yesterday but got the same blank page.

Also, I've tried to use the phone as a music player today on my bus trips.

1-

Putting music into the phone was a pain because it restarted a few times when I plugged the phone into my PC via a USB cable.

After that, making a new playlist with poweramp (from what I understand, poweramp stores the playlists as cache unless I export them) was a bigger pain because as I add songs to the new playlist, the song folders would randomly disappear (maybe this has something to do with why the phone restarts randomly?) and I had to use an option in poweramp called "Rescan" to make them appear again (I think it basically rescans the phone's internal memory for song files). But when these songs reappeared, the songs that were already in the new playlist disappeared as if I've never added any songs into it.

I've managed to get through this by deleting songs from an exported playlist from my old phone (which has all the songs on it, including the ones I didn't copy to my Z5) and then playing it. This modified playlist kept any changes I've made to it even after a few random restarts.

2-

Right after a few restarts, I was able to get the music going with my headphones when I was on a bus. The phone was left in standby mode in my pocket while playing music and it never restarted as long as I didn't press the power button to wake it up (it restarted once right after the screen was turned on when I pressed the power button but it also made it through the lock screen a few times).

Not sure if the stock player can do this but Poweramp can auto-resume/pause when I plug/unplug the headphones and using this function didn't seem to cause the phone to restart.

Regards,

Ricky

[Ricky1234612]

I've reflashed the same firmware a few times with Xperifirm and Flashtool but the same thing is still happening.

Also, I've found a video of someone with the same phone and problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rwZdAPpaJc

[Ricky1234612 · Accepted solution]

Flashed every official unlocked firmware there is with xperifirm and flashtool. But none of them made a difference.

Will give this up when I wake up tmr if there's no reply by then so that I don't have to keep this tab pinned...