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Sony phones are hands down the best android phones I've used. The UI has for a long time been mostly stock, with nice additional touches.
Plenty of options in the settings, and almost all have a good explanation of what they do without dumbing it down too much. Giving actually helpful information to the user instead of treating them like infants.
The fact that they've stuck to offering 3.5mm jacks and SD slots is great, they stuck to dedicated camera shutter buttons for ages too (even with a two stage focus function when you pressed lightly). No notches. Two front facing speakers.
They're also very dev friendly, going as far as publishing bootable AOSP builds on their GitHub.
I like how, despite them being a small player, they their code contributions to AOSP is beaten by only Google themselves. Many of the sleep/battery optimisations we've seen over the years were actually a Sony contribution.
There's a lot to like about Xperias. That said, there's also some stuff that pisses me off.
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The naming is dreadful. What comes after the Xperia 1? Why the Xperia 1 II of course! I swear only their console division is capable of clear and sensible naming.
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They often announce a new phone then don't release it for another 2 months
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They've fallen seriously behind in software support. This will be mitigated by EU legislation forcing longer support, but it'll still be behind Samsung/Google.
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They overcharge for their phones, get blasted in reviews for it, then drop prices a couple of months later, but by then the perception of the phones costing too much has already taken root - stupid!
Used a Z1 for +7 years so fell in love with Sony phones and made me got a 1ii (I'd think naming them as 1.0, 1.1... could be a much better convention that this stupidity) when it finally had to say goodbye.
Those four 'cons' points are exactly the same points people complained about them 4 years ago.
They're absolutely great, I'd feel miserable with another phone brand - but It's unbelievable they have done absolutely nothing in this time to assess those points.
I had an Xperia XZ Premium once. Got fooled by their AOSP commitment only to later find out that their camera sensor comes with DRM and installing a ROM will result in severely degraded photo quality.
They removed the drm on phone released after 2019 with the start of the current Xperia 1/5/10 lineup.
Good to know. Too bad for them that other vendors massively increased support cycles in the meantime.
Thank you for this.
The price is indeed the biggest issue. An Xperia 5 V is still 580€ second hand where I live, it's crazy.
The name is supposed to be read as Xperia 1 Mark V etc. so it's still not great and they should just have letters for their Lines instead of having two numbers back to back but it helps if you want to make sense of it.
Yeah, I know. But expecting smartphone users to be versed in one product range of your company's camera division is kinda crazy
- The naming is dreadful. What comes after the Xperia 1? Why the Xperia 1 II of course! I swear only their console division is capable of clear and sensible naming.
Their phone division is run by their camera division and unfortunately the naming makes sense in that situation
- They've fallen seriously behind in software support. This will be mitigated by EU legislation forcing longer support, but it'll still be behind Samsung/Google.
I think only Samsung and Google are doing 7 years of updates. Plus fun fact Sony releases Asop builds of newer versions of android 3 years after eol. But for some reason they won't extend updates for their gms roms
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