Assignment 1: "I should never have purchased"

Sony Xperia Play

My phone contract was coming to an end and it was time for an upgrade. Admittedly, I was upgrading from a Nokia so anything would be better, or so I thought...

Earlier that year I attended “Gadget Show Live” at the NEC. Where a vast array of high end tech manufactures come together in one big hall to show off their latest upcoming products. The notorious technology tycoon, Sony, had a rather unusually large stand as they were showcasing their all new Xperia Play, the “revolutionary” step in mobile gaming technology by incorporating a slide out PSP style gamepad into a standard Sony smart phone. I was amazed by the concept and sure enough a few months later, made the purchase.

The faults were immediately noticeable from the first start-up of the handset. Upon unpacking the phone from its box I noticed the horrific button placement. The power button was situated below the level of the casing, making it very fiddly to awaken the phone. Then there was the issue of where the volume buttons were positioned, rather oddly, in the middle of the side of the phone, exactly where your palm rests whilst holding the handset. Causing the slightest change in grip to alter the volume, occasionally to max, giving you a rather unwelcomed shock whilst listening to music through the provided headphones (which were also crap).

Button placement aside, there were other faults too. The PSP panel didn’t quite line up with the main phone body, and the sliding mechanism was quite loose. This made the phone very uncomfortable to hold as the edges of the product were noticeable, and not “seamless” as the product description described. Furthermore every time the sliding joint moved, the phone detected this movement and launched the mediocre media screen, which was to graphically intensive for the under specified Xperia to handle, Causing it to glitch and inevitable, crash. The result of the crash called for a reboot of the phone which seemed to take longer than necessary.

All of these faults seemed to be linked to a lack of market research, poor quality control and assurance checks and lastly subpar manufacturing processes resulting in misaligned parts.