Hello. I'm about at wit's end trying to fix my phone.
PHONE ISSUES- Phone operating normally
- Playing "Brain Wars" and locked screen to eat dinner
- Unlocked screen during dinner and opened the native camera app to look at a photo
- After opening photo, phone starts inputing randomly and rapidly without me touching it
- Lock screen and try again, but it continues; only sometimes registers input
- Lock and unlock screen multiple times, nothing changes
- Restart phone (by holding the power button and volume down) mutiple times, nothing changes
- Boot in safe mode (my thinking is at this point is that maybe Brain Wars was doing something weird) mutiple times, nothing changes
- Take out SIM Card and reboot, nothing changes
- Put back SIM Card and reboot, nothing changes
- Phone seems to work worse after rebooting and only just slightly better as time goes on
- Somehow was able to unlock phone and clear apps after many tries (Brain Wars included), nothing changes
- Decide to use the Sony PC Companion app to try and update the phone
**EDIT: Apparently Z3v's don't work with both PC Companion and Bridge For Mac. Skip to near the bottom.
SONY PC COMPANION ISSUES- ...Open Sony PC Companion app (haven't used it with my phone before/haven't updated phone since getting it in May '15)
- Connect my phone to my computer; it is recognized by the PC
- Sony PC Companion doesn't automatically detect my phone; I press the "How to connect" link in the top left
- Use the "USB cable" connection option and click "Next"
- Sony PC Companion app says "Searching," doesn't find anything, moves to next step
- Sony PC Companion suggests reconnecting it at the "Connect" stage; once doing that, it moves to the next stage.
- Sony PC Companion says installing phone in the "Detect" stage
- Sony PC Companion moves to the "Finish" stage and says it's not up to date; it has an update button; I click that and it says that the Sony PC Companion app is up to date
- Restart the app and try again mutiple times, nothing changes
- Launch the app as administrator, nothing changes
- Reinstall the app and run normally and as administrator, nothing changes
- Switch which USB slot the micro-USB wire is connected to, nothing changes
- Switch the micro-USB wire I'm using, nothing changes
- Look online for tips; everything online is old and irrelevent i.e. download Sony Ericcson Update, Sony Phone Update apps
- Add it to Windows Firewall and try again, nothing changes
- Disable Windows Firewall and try again, nothing changes
- Decide to use Bridge for Mac instead to see if that will work
BRIDGE FOR MAC ISSUES- ...Download Bridge For Mac on a family Mac laptop
- Install Bridge For Mac succesfully
- Connect phone to Mac; "Connected to PC" appears in the top left of my Z3 screen
- Bridge For Mac says "Phone not connected" or something like that
- Try reconnecting wire to computer and phone to wire, nothing changes
- Find "Repair Phone" option in one of the "tabs" at the top of the desktop screen
- Pop-up appears saying that a phone should be at 80% charge to continue, mine is only at 54%
- Wait until my phone reaches 80% and try to repair it
- Software says that anything on the internal memory will be erased in the process; that is not desirable at all
- Give up and try asking for help using this thread
That's where I'm at right now. I guess my options are to:
- Repair it with Bridge For Mac, losing all my data in the process.
- Wait for some advice on here.
- Call support directly.
- Take it to the store.
- Wait overnight and see if it's fixed.
- Factory reset it from the phone, losing all my data in the process(?).
So, yeah, that's pretty much it. This is so incredibly frustrating all over the board. I'd like to think I'm slightly more knowledgable about computers than most people, but this whole process is just ridiculously unintuitive and it's giving me an extremely bad impression of Sony, it's phone(s), and it's software(s). I like my Z3 just fine, but it seems like it gets **bleep**ed up all the time. At least with my old iPhone I didn't have to deal with annoying **bleep** like this.
Thanks for any help given.
