I'm not sure if they are really new or refurbished phones the give.
I also have the problem, together with the 'black dots on the camera sensor' and 'dead battery'.
I'm from Belgium but I bought the phone in Germany. Yesterday the phone left the shop towards the repair center, I'm curious what they will do. I never had a phone with so much hardware problems. And I'm even not talking about the skin on the cover that was peeling of after not even 3 weeks. For that I never found an agreement with the Phone House nor Sony. They always keep saying it's was my fault. They pretend I was using a detergent on the cover... something that's not true and was never proved by either of them. I was suffering from extreme heating when the phone was idle, a problem that was resolved with installing a new firmware when I got back my phone after 3 months of contesting.
I will be very satisfied with either a new or refurbished phone