How does everyone feel about Sony (+Ericsson) Phones?

Previously on Lemmy: OnePlus

Past Discussions:

Motorola

I personally don't have much experience with Sony Ericsson phones. To me, all Sony electronics (outside of the PlayStations) are always just good, but also always at a price premium, and there is usually better value to be found with another brand. (I will concede that many of their recent products, however, actually feels like they are the best in class again.)

Sony phones are no exception to the rule. I've only seen one Sony phone out in the wild (outside of the Persona 5 anime, where apparently every phone is made by Sony). It was good, had everything I wanted on a phone, but nothing really stands out about it outside of its small size. You would think the company that supplies everyone's camera sensors and makes the best mirrorless camera would, by logic, have the best camera phones as well, but again, nothing about them really stands out.

In conclusion, always good, never exceptional.

Also, last 2 cents, I just can't take the name "Xperia One II" seriously.

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Love my Sony Xperia 1 IV. Has all the features I miss from the galaxy line (mostly as card). Heat issues weren't nearly the monster reviewers made them out to be.
- How's the battery life on it?
  
  Solid, easily get a full day or more based on how much I'm on it.

I have a 5ii and had a Z5 in the past. I'll probably buy a 5v in the near future. Sony has a unique mix of hardware features (headphone jack, removable storage, front facing speakers, capacitive fingerprint scanner, no holepunch) and a near-stock implementation of android that only LG rivaled. I love their industrial design and form factor.
- It's kind of sad that having a good set of what should be standard features is so unique now.

How come you are bringing up the Ericsson part? There hasn't been a phone carrying a Sony Ericsson brand in ten years?
- Oh, I just wanted to be inclusive of everyone who's ever had a Sony phone, even if they had it when they were still Sony Ericsson.
  
  Like me! My very first cellphone was a Sony Ericcson. It was a GSM bar phone, in 2004. Got it free with the AT&T employee plan. It saved me once. I was in a car wreck on the freeway and my gf was using AOL (ha) on the only phone line at my house so I used my tiny Sony Ericsson to contact a co worker friend on msn messenger (this is seriously making me sound old) and told her to IM my gf to get off the computer/phone so I could call about my car accident and get help. It wasn't a smartphone, either, but it did the trick there.
  Then I got one of those Sony Walkman phones a year later, it was excellent for music.

I can't really comment much on current phones but as a dev I have come to own the Xperia Z3, Z5, Z5 Compact, XZ, XZ1 Compact, XZ1 Premium, XZ2 and XZ2 Compact for testing websites and Apps and I have here in Austria seen them in the wild from time to time due to Sony phones having been promoted quite a lot by local carrier - but that all was 5 or more years ago. These days I barley see them, and even if its always older Models from XZ times.
One of the things Sony through all these years always got right in my opinion is the Software. Sony's Software IS what reviewers say Oxygen OS is. Its 90% Stock and performance is always top notch and mega consistent for the given chipset. Even the Z5 despite having the controversial Snapdragon 810 puts out a solid and most importantly **consistent **performance to this day. Its not like with Galaxy S6 which is equally if not more powerful on paper but sometimes bogs down for no reason.
My biggest issue with these older Sony phones is their Screens. For some reason 6 out of my 8 Sony phones have some kind LCD related issues (Sony was also really late in using OLED) . My XZ1 compact has quite a few dead pixels and the other 5 have some brighter areas on the LCD which can look distracting. And yes some other brands have it too but maybe I got unlucky or something but Sony phones from my experience seem to by far the worst.
With their latest phones - I think they are in a great spot. They are a boutique Manufacturer with a clear audience in mind far away from the mainstream. I think unlike LG they recognized in time that they can't compete anymore in the mainstream and downsized the whole operation to what it is today instead of shutting the doors completely. This way people who really enjoy high-end notchless phones with a headphone jack and cameras that aim for authentic pictures still have very pricy option instead of none at all.
I am still a bit perplexed however on who buys the Xperia 10 phones for them to continue making them.
- I am still a bit perplexed however on who buys the Xperia 10 phones for them to continue making them.
  I do! 🙂 They're amazing value for money. I usually buy them one year late and they're super cheap (about 200-250€). Not sure what you think is wrong with them? They have debloated ROMs, OLED HD screens, 5G, dual-sim, IP65/IP68, 128GB, 6GB RAM, good cameras (wide/normal/tele), amazing battery optimization...
  
  Thats cool, but when you get them one year late at a massive discount I doubt they make a profit on them. But good for you, for sure!
  
  The lack of high refresh rate displays on the 10 series always stood out to me, when most of its competitors have 90Hz at worst

I used my Z3 Tablet Compact until it fell apart. I would buy an updated one the very second it was announced.
Overall, I wish Sony was actually competing. It really feels like HQ just forgot this tiny division exists so they keep making phones that feel designed for the idiosyncrasies of the people that work there rather than the market at large. That should be good for a place like here, but they're so uncompetitive on price.
Also what's the shorthand here? L/Android?
- The community link is either c/android@lemmy.world (site preferred) or !android@lemmy.world (human preferred), it should automatically link if you type either of those in.
  
  Are you the real Margot Robbie and is this some elaborate Barbie promo?

Can you easily unlock the boot loaders to install Lineage? What kind of factory bloatware comes on them?
- Yes, you enter the IMEI of the first slot on the Sony website and get the bootloader unlock code, that's it. They are Treble devices btw so you can flash any GSI ROM not just LineageOS.
  
  Oh, nice! Assumed since Sony it'd be locked down and walled-in like every other Sony device I've owned. I've been sticking with OnePlus and Motorola and making sure the ones I got were bootloader-unlockable, but I may give them a look for my pending upgrade.

The new Xperia 1 V looks amazing and is coming out this month. It is really expensive but is one of the only phones nowadays that comes with an aux jack and a micro SD card slot. It's great having a phone with 1.25-1.5 TB of space for lossless music, photos, etc and not having to pay monthly for cloud storage. I've always been a Samsung guy but since they followed Apple and ditched the basics I may try a Sony phone in the near future if there's a price drop or a refurbished deal. The biggest criticism I see with Sony phones is that they only commit to 2 years of updates, which for $1,400 is quite lousy considering other brands offer 4 years of update support for their phones.
- At that point, I probably would have just got a dedicated Walkman for more battery and less fragile device.
  
  I like my Astell and Kern SR25 II for a portable music player, good UI and plenty of headphone power.

The Ericsson brand hasn't been on phones for more than a decade! Some very interesting phones from that era though.

The best phone I have ever used is sonyericsson p910i It was years ahead of it game. Best form factor, came with a pen, removable keyboard, SD card, and so on...

Too niche and expensive. They would do better to offer some phones with some value as a vehicle for high end sales.

Too expensive. I don't want to pay more than $500 for a phone
- The Xperia 10 models are usually around $400.
- The 1 is stupid priced, but the 10 is pretty decent, I recall.

Excellent phones that provide everything including a jack and micro sd slot. Wish they were available in my country but cost wayyy too much to export.

I've had an Xperia S and Z5. I loved both phones because they were well designed aesthetically, both hardware and software, in comparison to the competition at the time such as the early Galaxy S models. As part of their UI skins, they also had some thoughtful features and some hardware features which at the time weren't so common, such as side fingerprint unlock with the later models. Nothing truly revolutionary, true, but just a well rounded experience, and at least with their early models, worth the slight price premium.
Then Sony stopped selling their phones in Australia a few years ago, so that was that. :(

As a user of a Xperia One IV, I can say I've been very impressed and very happy with my phone. One of the few good phones that still has a headphone jack and a microsd card slot, both of which I regularly use. When it runs out of updates at some point, I can install a custom OS on it like Lineage, so it's been awesome and I'll be using this phone for years to come. If you can afford one (since they are quite expensive, I got mine on a sale and it was still expensive), I highly recommend it.

Love my Sony Xperia 1 IV. Has all the features I miss from the galaxy line (mostly as card). Heat issues weren't nearly the monster reviewers made them out to be.

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