ClassicConnect

[nick99nack]

Gather 'round, it's story time!

It was May 23rd, 2025. I was in my second office in my basement, about to go to bed. I get up, turn the lights off above my desk and start to walk upstairs, smartphone in hand. As I'm a little past halfway up the stairs, I trip. Instinct kicks in and I put my arms out to catch myself. Only problem, my phone was in my hand, and I landed right on it. I then tried to get up and ended up further dropping it down the stairs. As you can imagine, the screen cracked. I broke my Pixel 6 Pro.

The screen is still pretty readable, but all of the touch functionality no longer works. It's useless.

I obviously needed to get a replacement of some kind, but what? I've been wanting an Xperia for a while, but a new model was only a couple weeks away from being released and I wanted to wait for reviews on it before deciding whether or not to buy it. So, I go on eBay and look around for cheap smartphones, especially older, used Xperias, so I could get my feet wet and see what this brand has to offer. I ended up finding a Japanese model Xperia 5 II at a good price. I'm in luck!

I know what some of you are thinking. Wait, will a device from Japan even work in the US? Well, my friend Lyra has the exact same phone. It works on T-Mobile using LTE band 4. The service on hers isn't great, but it's usable for the most part, and I'm likely to upgrade in a couple months anyway. This phone is just a holdover until I can get a newer device. Knowing these caveats ahead of time, I bought the device.

Shipping took what seemed like forever, which wasn't helped by the fact that it was delayed an extra day due to Memorial day. But I finally got it, charged it up, put in the SIM and.... nothing? I got no service, at all. Uh oh! Did I just buy a useless phone?

After lots of troubleshooting between me, Lyra and Alyx, we came to the conclusion that the phone was attempting to negotiate using restricted bands and not band 4 like we needed it to. So what do we do to fix this? Well, there were two options: either reflash the modem firmware with US firmware (potentially better reception, but a higher chance of accidentally bricking the device), or use the Sony Xperia Companion and hope that it downloads its own updated firmware which would at least allow band 4 to work.

I went with the latter. It was pretty easy, other than having to charge the phone to 100% in order for the tool to actually run. After that, and manually selecting the network, everything worked! Even VoLTE which is one of the things Lyra's phone does not currently support. It worked immediately. Word of warning however, do not attempt to use a Verizon SIM in the phone once you do that! It will break everything again and you'll have to start over! I learned this the hard way unfortunately.

Now, for the good! This phone is pretty great. It has a headphone jack, microSD card slot, and some decent Camera features. The audio quality is especially good, even if the headphone amp is a bit on the weak side. Efficient headphones are a must!

Some pics too! (click to view larger versions)

_________________
If you like browsing without an ad blocker, you might also like getting rid of your virus scanner, and running around with your pants down. --SomeGuy, 2016

[LyraNovaHeart]

Yep, I own the same phone indeed. Ideally if you're in the US you'd want to be lucky enough to find a XQ-AS62 variant (USA Unlocked Dual SIM), however those are rare. VoLTE support on this variant, the SOGO2 is still hit or miss, it's still an active experiment whether it'll work long term, but for now on mine, VoLTE does not work. It'll drop you to 2G GPRS which uses the GSM codec, that runs at 13.2kbps which will make your calls sound very bad, worse than the average VoIP line which typically uses G.711 @ 64kbps. You can avoid using 2G to call by using Google Voice, that's what I use, but it's not a reliable long term solution especially as T-Mobile's 2G network continues to diminish. If all you need for it is just as a music player or a secondary phone without internet, this thing works great! Especially for music.

Note: This device only works on T-Mobile in the US, AT&T will kick you off for using a international variant and Verizon does not work at all with it
_________________
I'm one day closer to being who I wanna be~

[newbie1234]

Thats a crazy accident! I wish you and your phones good luck!
_________________
from harrison