Without sugar-coating it, Android 12 is a bit of an acquired taste. It was cool to see Google revamp the UI appearance and take it even further into that Material You direction. But some choices struck us a bit odd.
Specifically the size and shape of the quick toggles in the notification shade — these now take a lot more space and let you store a lot less quick functions on one page. No idea why, but it seems that — at some point — Google also saw this as a problem… and decided to combine the Wi-Fi and Mobile Data toggles within one quick tile — the controversial Internet tile.
Sony to the rescue
Early builds of Android 12 also had the Wi-Fi and Data tiles separate
This begs the question — is the old style a bug introduced by factory-resetting an Xperia with a fresh Android 12 update? Or is the Android 12 update slightly bugged and requires the factory reset to straighten out?
[Spot reserved for comment from Sony. Check back later]
But not all that is old is gold
Sadly, users are also noticing the lack of a highly-praised privacy-oriented feature. Android 12 introduced new quick toggles to globally disable your phone’s camera and microphone — just in case you are worried someone or some app might be… “listening in”. It seems that these toggles were not included with the current build of Android 12 for Xperia flagships, which is a perplexing disappointment.
Note: status bar indicators for Microphone or Camera use will still work! This means that if any app on your phone is using your camera or microphone, you should see a persistent green or yellow dot in the top-right of your display.
Of course, we have asked Sony about that as well. We will update this bit as soon as we get an answer.
