A few days ago, the tech world was shocked to hear that Sony’s Xperia Z (poised to become one of the hottest smartphones of 2013) was being criticized heavily online because Xperia Zs were dying at random — some after battery death, others on a fully-charged battery. This was the situation on the World Wide Web:

“All over the XDA and Sony Mobile Talk forums, people are spilling their guts about sudden death episodes and the biggest problem of them all is they don’t seem to be caused by only one glitch. Several of these might have something to do with Z’s battery, but the vast majority really does come out of nowhere.

There are even folks reporting their Zs have breathed their last after only a few hours of use, which is pretty scary. In some cases, you can apparently resuscitate your breathless precious with a hard reset (power button + volume up), but most of the times [sic] there’s nothing you can do besides say a prayer, put the phone in his coffin box and return it for a refund or replacement” (Adrian Diaconescu, “Mystery Bug epidemic causes random death of Sony Xperia Z devices, fix is incoming”).

This is not good news for Sony, considered to be on the rise with its newest Xperia smartphones. The worst thing about this whole ordeal is that it happens to be on the one phone that is waterproof and dustproof. I wish that Sony would make more phones waterproof, but for some reason, waterproof technology has not caught on or become a splash hit (pun intended) with smartphone consumers. Out of all the phones in which this could have gone wrong, why did it go wrong with the Xperia Z smartphone?

In any case, Sony promised that it would respond to this crisis — and quickly. I am pleased to report that in just a few days, Sony has set itself to handle this situation by releasing a Sudden Death Fix update to tackle the Xperia Z sudden death problem. According to Android Community’s Robert Nelson, Sony has just begun to release the update labeled “10.1.A.1.434.” Xperia Z owners can grab this update either 1) over the air or 2) by way of the PC Companion App.

The Xperia Z is not the first phone to have experienced sudden death. Earlier this year, it was reported that Galaxy S3′s were experiencing sudden death after a few months, or that while charging batteries, GS3′s were dying in the middle of recharges — with some reporting death occurrences out of nowhere. One thing that I applaud Sony for in all of this is that the company did something that few can say they’ve done: that is, handle the situation promptly. Apple promised a security update for its lock screen vulnerability, but it just released 6.1.3 a few days ago (the lock screen vulnerability was announced a few weeks ago). Manufacturers can learn from Sony how they should release updates that patch holes in software or cause battery or sudden death issues, should they arrive in the future.

Despite this latest infamy on Sony, the Xperia Z manufacturer should hold its head high. After all, how many bugs were present in Apple’s iPhone 5? WiFi Bug, Do Not Disturb (DND) bug, lock screen vulnerability/ emergency call flaw — and these are the ones that are at the forefront of my mind. These stand alone, if you do not count the color streaks that were appearing with some iPhone 5s and the scratched-out key row on the virtual keyboard (that appeared in YouTube demonstration videos). Despite the multitude of bugs that appeared in the iPhone 5, Apple responded to these with updates and software patches that have been nearly forgotten by many iPhone 5 customers. Apple’s iPhone 5 has been a big hit since January, with Apple’s OS domination placing iOS past Android. This shows that even Sony can bounce back from this minor drawback.

The Droid Guy