Home Screen Rotation on the Sony Xperia P

The Sony Xperia P keeps surprising me. This mid-range Android smartphone not only packs a wallop, but thanks to Sony’s tweaking of the UI, this is arguably the Android implementation that is the closest to what obtained on Symbian OS.

It is interesting that just yesterday afternoon, a friend of mine was telling me how Sony Ericsson back then was a favourite of ours. Their UIQ fork of Symbian was not only a joy to use and highly capable back then, but they also offered some of the best camera, music and video experiences on mobile, as well as the best value for money.

It was later in the day just before heading to bed that I flipped the Xperia P to landscape in the home screen, and found to my shock that it rotated from portrait to landscape. I did a double take and after recovering, tried it again and again. Finding landscape view on the home screen of an Android smartphone is like finding an ice cube in the fires of hell. This is something that I took for granted on Symbian. By default, the Android smartphone home screen does not rotate, something that has been one of my biggest gripes with Android smartphones. Android 4.1.2 is the version that adds home screen rotation to Android smartphones. The Xperia P runs v4.0.4.

There seems to be some glitch in the implementation though, as there are times that no matter how much I tap or shake the when in the home screen, it refuses to rotate to landscape. Bummer. This got me wondering: What if the home screen rotation is itself a glitch and was not intentionally included in the UI? There is a planned update to Jelly Bean for the Xperia P, but I doubt that it will be v4.1.2 that it will be getting.