Sony xperia Z2. My first smartphone.

[Gate Keeper]

If you have time Jay check the settings for the file sizes when you are taking the photos as jpg will give you more files to choose from than taking them in large format. Do post up the photos night and day shots. Thanks

[Jay]

Originally Posted by coolcat

It might be worth you downloading the Tapatalk app as well Jay.
It allows an easier interface when using forums such as this on your smartphone.
I don't bother myself but others seem to like it

That's handy to know Jeff. Will have to try it out

Originally Posted by tdi90

Nav free for me. Maps are downloaded and saved on your phone so it doesnt use your mobile data like google maps. Speed camera warnings are £1.99 for life and so far ( touch wood) in almost 3 years its picked up every camera I've been passed.
I would have thought you'd be able to link the phone to your head unit so that'll display the satnav

A thumbs up for Nav free then. Will have to investigate that as well as Waze that guru mentioned.
Unfortunately my dvd screen can not be used as a monitor for a smart phone although the Ripspeed can be used as a monitor for the reverse camera function.
As for mobile data my phone comes with 4GB of data per month so should be ok in that department

Originally Posted by Gate Keeper

If you have time Jay check the settings for the file sizes when you are taking the photos as jpg will give you more files to choose from than taking them in large format. Do post up the photos night and day shots. Thanks

Will do Phil. I have been playing with the camera and video for most of the day. Here you can see the video mode and the Time Shift video feature. I also cropped the video I took and am able to compress it to half the storage space (a lower quality, or double time (the best quality). This was done in the normal setting.

It took half an hour to upload a 34 second video in this mode to youtube It wont play properly in my windows media player. It just judders through with no Time Shift I will upload the latest windows flash player to see if that helps things.

[Gate Keeper]

If it helps you Jay, I use photo bucket for viewing the short videos I have done. I am on restricted bandwidth in East Africa and somehow PB has a way of coping with this making the uploads not so painfully slow. I think Mark2000 has an Xperia and is better qualified than I am to advise. Hopefully he will be along

[Jay]

It took me ages to upload my pictures onto media player on my Windows7 HP Pavilion g series core i5 laptop (windows 8.1 is meant to be better for this phone but I don't like windows 8)' Scanned the internet for another way of saving the pictures so that I could then send them to Photobucket. Could find nothing of real help. After 2 hours the laptop decided to recognise the pictures my last Sony would delay recognising new pictures but this just bad. Wonder if there is another way of doing it. All ideas greatly recieved
I dowmloaded a video to media player which just juddered through in the odd single frame with large gaps. I sent it you youtube and it played fine Took 30 minutes to loas a 34 second clip that was using Timeshift (on my last youtube clip on this thread)
Anyhoo here are some pictures using just the 'Superior auto' function. I'm quite pleased even if it was a mammoth task

[bigbaldbloke]

I have Dropbox installed on laptop and phone. Every picture and video I take/record is automatically uploaded onto the laptop.

If anyone wants to try it, feel free to use my affiliate link (I get extra space then!)

Link

[Jay]

Originally Posted by bigbaldbloke

I have Dropbox installed on laptop and phone. Every picture and video I take/record is automatically uploaded onto the laptop.

If anyone wants to try it, feel free to use my affiliate link (I get extra space then!)

Link

Thanks for that
Seems to have a high score rating but don't like the 'cons' bit (for my type of use)...

• Dropbox 2.6.10

' Pros
The file sharing features allow you to collaborate with people remotely and share large files.
Cons
It lacks a complete system restore and only keeps the last thirty days of archived files.
The Verdict
: 8.1/10 '

Still will look into it further.

[bigbaldbloke]

No worries, your actual pictures and videos are on your phone permanently, and on your laptop too.

I assume that they mean the phone only keeps 30 days of "other" files - i.e. it synchronises with everything you have in your laptop's Dropbox folder and automatically downloads the last 30 days' contents for you onto your phone. I have close to 9GB in mine, every single work document for the last 6 years, and it works like a charm for me.

I automatically get photos and videos on my laptop, plus it takes a couple of taps to get any laptop file onto my phone. It's also on my tablet, so I can access any file I want, at any time, on any device. I honestly can't recommend it highly enough.

The only con I'd actually give is that posting pictures on forums like here requires an extra couple of steps if you want the photo to show in your post, rather than just appear as a link.

Kev

[Jay]

Originally Posted by bigbaldbloke

No worries, your actual pictures and videos are on your phone permanently, and on your laptop too.

I assume that they mean the phone only keeps 30 days of "other" files - i.e. it synchronises with everything you have in your laptop's Dropbox folder and automatically downloads the last 30 days' contents for you onto your phone. I have close to 9GB in mine, every single work document for the last 6 years, and it works like a charm for me.

I automatically get photos and videos on my laptop, plus it takes a couple of taps to get any laptop file onto my phone. It's also on my tablet, so I can access any file I want, at any time, on any device. I honestly can't recommend it highly enough.

The only con I'd actually give is that posting pictures on forums like here requires an extra couple of steps if you want the photo to show in your post, rather than just appear as a link.

Kev

Thanks for explaining it better than the 'review' Kev. It seems a lot more attractive now

[Jay]

Phone messaging text alert sounds are kaput. Sony have recognised it as a software malfunction error. Another Z2 is being sent out for me from Vodafone tomorrow along with an extended 14 day trial period.
I am really liking this phone. I don't know how I managed without a smartphone for all these years now

[Jay]

The second phone has gone Kaput as well after a day. The screen is spasmodically jumping from screen to screen. Tried a reset to no avail.
Vodafone is sending me a 3rd Z2 this morning. Perhaps the Z2's just don't like me

I am able to download pictures now to my laptop with little problem. My laptop is not downloading video's to my laptop in Media player. I have 3 new videos on this phone which the Z2 is recognising and playing but the laptop is not. Well it did download one (don't know which of the 3) with no thumbnail picture , just a blank box where the thumbnail picture should be, but then clicking on it, the video would not open. I tried to load this to youtube but would not open. It was a 2 minute and although youtube loaded the video to 100% (taking 40 minutes) it would not go through the processing/ format stage at all so would not upload.

This similar thing happened uploading a video with my first Z2 phone last week. Media player on the laptop recognised a 1 minute video but in a blank square (again) with no thumb nail picture. Clicking on it, it played it in delayed snippets on the laptop (I had been using Time Delay) rather than fluently. I uploaded this to youtube which uploaded and formatted it and playback was perfect, here...



So why is does youtube upload one video and not another? Why does the Media player on the laptop play one video in snippet frames and doesn't play another at all? And why doesn't media player on the laptop show a thumbnail picture of the video uploaded instead of an empty box?
These are questions I will be putting to Sony's Technical Help Service today via the Vodafone help desk. I will update in case anyone with the same phone incurs the same problems.

Btw The laptop I am using is an HP Pavilion g7 1352ea Notebook PC, with a Core i5 processor with Windows 7.