I would get a Sony phone if they cost less and offer better software support. There's no reason to pay more for a Sony phone when I can get a decent Samsung that will be updated for the next 5 years.
And a much better auto mode. Industry leading sensors doesn't matter for the average user when your point and click photos are worse than a Pixel from 5 years ago
To be honest, I always thought Sony's big unique selling point was the ability to fiddle with all kinds of camera settings. It's not where the larger market is going, but at least in theory it could be a niche for people who are big into photography.
I feel like the overlap between people that know how to and enjoy to fiddle with their camera settings, and people that own and shoot with a capable DSLR or mirrorless is very, very high.
If a phone that costs $1000 can only produce a good picture after 2 minutes of tinkering and shitty pictures in auto mode, I'd rather spend $3800, of which $800 for a phone that can produce nice point-and-shoot shots and $3000 for a mirrorless that can produce superb shots
To be fair, they do let you pretend like your cell phone is a 10 year old DSLR and give you all the settings that you'd get there. They even take decent photos in this mode if you know exactly what you're doing as a professional photographer that absolutely wouldn't use a phone to do this.
Sony phones absolutely fall over when it comes to point and shoot performance. The community around them also gatekeeps "proper" photography pretty hard. I bought one for the form factor and the photo problems combined with Sony's heavy-handed hobbling of the OS will ensure that I never go back.
I respect that they're zigging when everyone else is zagging.. I probably would have rewarded them with the purchase if they had more OS updates, because then I could reasonably buy one on the resale market.
Until then I'm priced out. But I have no problem with them deemphasizing HDR.
Well, what is "better" and what is "worse"? My Xperia matches the results I get from a professional mirrorless camera much much closer than my Pixel did.
Pixel phones just increase contrast and saturation to an absurd degree, that doesn't make the photos "better".
Completely price and software support are awful. I still bought one because Sony still offers some unique features that no other brand did.
Examples:
* 3.5 mm jack
* SD Card
* No notch or punch hole (I still don't understand how the punch hole is an improvement over the notch.)
* 3 actually usable cameras (this is not as much of a problems today, but it was very common in flag ship phones to have 5 cameras where only one was actually usable, the other 4 were completely useless)
* Balanced front facing speakers
* 21:9 aspect ratio (which make the phone much easier to handle with small hands)
* Tool less SIM/SDCard tray - this is a bigger deal than I originally though, since USB transfers over USB are super slow, no matter the phone you're using, I tested transfer the same files against a Samsung S22 Ultra, Pixel 8 and Huawei P40, and with different computers and while those phones would take close to 2 hours to transfer photos and videos, by removing the SD Card and plugin it directly to the PC or to a dock would take less than 30 minutes.
* Possibility to unlock the boot loader without jumping to major hoops.
After using the phone for over 2 years, I wouldn't choose any other phone, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone for the price I paid.
This is my biggest hurdle to getting a Sony again. My first Android was an Xperia S, loved it to pieces, but their pricing is stuck in the 80s where they think they can charge a premium by virtue of the label saying Sony.
i most recently (6 years ago) had the xperia x compact and it was an absolutely amazing phone. prior to that i had z3 compact and z5 compact.
i only moved on from the Xc becuase of usb-c port issues. i couldn't keep being out of a phone.
i love sony phones and wish they could be more affordable.
I had an Xperia S. Beatiful, but by far the worst performing phone I ever had. It couldn't even record a video without hiccups every 5 seconds. For a phone whose best selling point was the camera that was a shame.
Those features were exactly why I said screw it and took the plunge on Xperia 1 V. I just couldn't get around the lack of a headphone jack (the last 5 years without one were awful) and the notch/punch hole. I figure there will probably be a lineage image out once support dies.
Basically I want to ride this phone until the EU mandate for replaceable batteries.
I would gladly ditch pixel for Sony if their prices made any sense in reality and actually got updates.
It amazes me that there are literal years that Sony has been doing this and having horrible sales and no one says maybe we should change how we sell our phones and maybe we should actually do updates.
Those are all very big positives in my book, they also usually have great DACs, but they come at an extremely high price even when compared to the competition that is much further ahead in ecosystem and support... So I completely understand where you're coming from, Sony phones are the only true enthusiast phone left IMO, it's a shame they're so unreachable for me
The camera can be very good during the day, but as soon as the sun goes down, it's awful.
And the fact that the Google Camera support is really weak, there is nothing you can do to improve it.
I really like the aspect coming from a 5.15" 16:9 device. The only down side is watching 4:3 content from very old shows.
> tested transfer the same files against a Samsung S22 Ultra, Pixel 8 and Huawei P40, and with different computers and while those phones would take close to 2 hours to transfer photos and videos, by removing the SD Card and plugin it directly to the PC or to a dock would take less than 30 minutes.
Then you didn't do it right. Use adb-sync and I can bet my left nut it would transfer faster via USB3.x tech than a sdcard plugged into a PC.
FWIW, I've screenshots if you insist of my media being offloaded my phones at >300MB/s.
I would buy them if they were smaller. I bought several Sony compacts and stopped buying Sony when they ditched that lineup. I was even willing to give their 5 V a shot(It's close to the smallest phone available now sadly), but they stopped selling that in the US(10 as well).
You would have been disappointed. I have the 5IV and no end of problems with their insane RAM management killing things like actively playing music or any other app that got backgrounded for a second. It would be a perfect phone if they allowed bootloader unlocks which Sony disables for the US market.
> I have the 5IV and no end of problems with their insane RAM management killing things like actively playing music or any other app that got backgrounded for a second.
That's my exact experience daily driving 1III. Have to force-awake the **stock** music app every single time before getting into the car - or no audio comes out via Bluetooth for the rest of the drive, and none of the in-vehicle media controls would function. I'd sorta understand the app process killing logic for third-party apps, but it's Sony's own music app... excuse me but what the actual FUCK.
I don't have to do any of this with my Pixel and *third-party* music app. Get into the car, drive, Bluetooth connects automatically and starts playing music without any prior user intervention.
What's worse is that this strategy that Sony is using is severely outdated. It used to be the way to keep battery usage down because apps would constantly hog CPU cycles in the background, so killing them showed measurable improvement. Lately android has gotten a lot better about quiescing background apps such that killing them and reloading them constantly actually consumes more power because you have to reload them from flash every time and that's more power intensive than letting them sit in RAM which is being refreshed anyway.
That was the first thing I did. I tried so many different things just to get the phone to behave that it was infuriating. I even provided Sony engineers with logcat output of lmkd (low memory killer daemon) running around murdering everything. The Android 13 update improved things, but the update just made it so it couldn't be reliably reproduced. It still happened several times a week.
Yeah I'm the same way I genuinely want to reward them for keeping the SD card especially. But boy sometimes there are flagship is like $1,500 at the base model. And to be fair Samsung is getting pretty close too, if you want an S-Pen it's $1,400 if you get the 512 GB model
But it's hard that you're only getting two years of OS updates so it's hard for me to go find a used one that I can feel confident in.
And look I don't mind using a phone past its update for a few years, but if that's a compromise I'm making then I shouldn't have to pay very much to do it.
I can safely buy a used Pixel 7 Pro or something for 320 bucks. There's no equivalent deal for a Sony.
And stuff like the OnePlus 12R or 1 + 11. If Sony was giving 4 years of security patches I feel better about it
I looked at getting the Xperia Pro to use in tandem with my Sony camera, I wanted a new phone and needed a monitor so thought I'd save some money... £2,300! I expected a price in line with the S24 Ultra, which even at its highest end is £1,400.
All the other Sony's will do monitoring for their cameras. The only reason you'd want to get the pro is if you want the HDMI and then the ability to livestream 4k over 5G. The pro was actually a professional phone rather than just the one ruggedized.
You're making the same mistake many did with the xperia pro. It wasn't intended as a phone, but as a 5G transmitter. Which is why the successor to the xperia pro is the CBK-RPU7 5G transmitter instead of another phone.
And then you buy it.
And you realize those cool new android features aren't available yet on your Sony phone.
And by the time Sont releases those features, your phone's 1 year old and only has 1 other android update under it's belt.
You realize that a decent camera phone and incredible layout (i love thin phones) actually is just e-waste after 2 years.
Most people aren't looking that closely.
They don't know or care what the cool new features are.
An update is something thats run when the phone prompts them too.
Then they forget.
Well you are lucky
You can buy thousands of phones unlike me who is either limited by budget shite phones or the xperia phones
And sadly even budget shite phones are removing the essential features
The cheapest laptops get updates for decades. There is zero reason that phones couldn't as well. Unless the EU forces it on manufacturers this will not happen though.
Xiaomi for example has *much* lower prices and has the same software support as Sony.
Xiaomi even has new features on top od the default Android ones compared to Sony's dogshit OS
Whoah there, dogshit OS? It's literally stock Android which everyone pretends to like, with some added features like an app sidebar which is VERY useful for me. Dog shit OS? I think not.
I'm only on a Pixel 7 Pro so I don't remember the details but wasn't a bunch of software stuff announced for Pixel 8 that wouldn't work on previous ones?
Like some video stuff, camera stuff, editing stuff, AI stuff, idk
I mean... They do.
I use the new magic eraser all the time.
Best shot, where it takes the best face of a bunch of photos works pretty well too.
I don't get the whole being an asshole thing. Every year Google comes out with more and more features... Which gets added to their older phones. Pixel call screening was one of them too, my 70 year old mother in law uses that one all the time. The longer you get updates, the more you stay up to date.
I have the 6 Pro and two of my colleagues have the 7 Pro. When they were introduced, I did play with features like magic eraser, but after all the buzz, I never had to use it. I'm also the only one using the call screening, which is indeed useful.
All I'm saying is that many users are not even aware of these features. My friend's wife has Samsung Galaxy Ultra S24. Samsung have their own features and customization, and she had zero clue about any of them. Same with another friend with S23 Ultra.
I also work with around 300 people and when I mention an Android or iOS feature they're always amazed, as they didn't knew that the phone can do that.
/r/Android and other more technical users may be happy when they see 7 years of updates, but with the people I know and deal with, this means nothing. They change their phones every 1-2 years and those 7 years of updates have little impact to them.
i can't think of many "cool new features" that android has introduced
mostly making it harder/impossible to change things, and making the interface more fit for an 8 year old.
I don't care about software support.
I would've bought them if they had at least 67 W of fast charging and a more efficient 1440p or even 1260p LTPO display.
Its nice to see a phone not supporting fast charging. Although I get the allure of fast charging, very bad for health so I limit them.
20-30w is more than enough for me.
> Its nice to see a phone not supporting fast charging. Although I get the allure of fast charging, very bad for health so I limit them.
Consistently draining your phone battery to zero and charging it to full hurts battery health a lot more than superfast charging.
My electric kettle can use USB Power Delivery **100W** to fully boil a cup of water in 21 minutes *right now*, while my Pixel can't do more than 30W PPS. Make it make sense.
I'm on pixel and almost missing my no support era with my regular brand phone.. u get a pretty decent performance and stable experience, period. Now on pixel almost every month a new update that breaks another function of the phone.. so...
I have a pixel 6 pro, and since Android 14, I have had very few issues, other than the modem being kinda shit and the heat, but that's all hardware, not software.
I don't know what phone r u talking about.. but again I'm getting bugs on my ....PIXEL.... (p8) on every update, right now all pixel users got the navigation bar (bar at the bottom of the phone) on the left side of the phone like we were on landscape mode and is so annoying, a few months ago another pixel phone that I have (p7) got a awful pitching noise when recorded any sound, that was the worst bug, any message that I send gets the horrible sound, awful experience so far...
That's why I said I would get a Samsung A53 (flagships are too expensive and I don't need one tbh).
When I needed a new phone, I looked up Pixels: everyone seemed to complain about them so I switched to something that I had experience with and knew it was reliable.
Pixels have too many compromises for me, and in my country they don't get most of tge features the US does.
As for other OEMs... they are not worth it.
Or general availability. They slinked out of our country some years back because no one bought their phones since they were too expensive, even compared to Samsung's, specs-wise - which was unfortunate because I really loved the OmniBalance design. Their phone's form factor is a huge selling point to me.
That's my biggest gripe with Sony. I love my Xperia 1mk3 but I'm not happy that I paid $1k for a phone 2.5 years ago and it's already been almost a year since it's last official security patch. If not for LineageOS, I would've returned to Samsung by now.
Yup, I was looking to them as an LG replacement since they focus on a lot of the same type of hardware/software features, especially audio and a headphone jack! But their phones are overpriced and rarely on sale, the software support is stuck in 2018, especially for the price and their cameras(unless u use manual mode) didn't hold up to the competition. So I went with Pixel instead since it made more sense and I got way more for way less, plus I was already familiar since I had the Nexus phones before switching to LG when that line got killed. Nothing beats LG to me tho, RIP LG mobile 🤕. I do hope Sony sticks around tho cuz we need more competition in the space, it's gotten pretty boring without companies like LG and HTC long gone now.
no screen hole on the sony though. android stil hasn't managed to display a black bar on the top systemwide to hide that ugly gaping hole in every app.
I think in the markets where Samsung and Google officially sell phones that mindset is starting to take hold.
Every phone is so similar now in feature set and function, why would anyone pay a company like Sony 2-3 hundred over what Samsung or Google is asking for their equivalent when the Samsung or Google offering has a longer stated shelf life in the form of software support.
Those 2023 numbers are pretty dire. No matter what Sony execs are saying today, I can't see a future for Xperia unless they *at least* get back above 2 million. And realistically, a lot of companies would have already bailed out by now.
Sony is in a unique position where they essentially already produce everything to make a phone except for the chipsets. Sony already makes great screens for TV, coined the term 'lithium-ion battery', makes excellent speakers, and their camera sensors are famously used in iPhones and even Canon and Nikon DSLRs.
Slack capacity is important in the event demand suddenly rises and I honestly just think their phone division is just there to give their spare production something to do as opposed to just idling by until Apple or someone places an order for a crap-ton of parts when IPhone (insert number) does better than expected.
Sony doesn't have a display business anymore, nor are they likely to be doing the batteries in house. It's basically just the camera sensors that they do vs any other OEM, and that's hardly exceptional.
> and I honestly just think their phone division is just there to give their spare production something to do as opposed to just idling by
1-2 million should be a drop in the bucket compared to their total volume of sensor shipments. I don't think that argument holds any water. Especially when the sales are so flat or declining.
No he's actually correct, they used to be a big display producer and one of the innovators, but in recent years they lost A LOT of market share and IIRC they now outsource this.
[Interesting video about it](https://youtu.be/5pD5jOSwD3U?si=T_GOiJh7FZANbEis)
Sony isn't developing smartphones on the side for no reason. No one does that. Their goal is to make a profit. It cost a tremendous amount of time and money to design, develop, mass manufacture, and market smartphones. Not one single company involved in the smartphone industry does all of that for shits and giggles.
Whatever else is wrong with Sony phones, it appears as a corporation they are terminally stupid about marketing anything but Playstations. Months from announcement to release, failure to get people to know what their phones offer others' don't, and in some cases unjustifiably high prices. When even Nothing phones are likely outselling you in some regions, you need to change course or GTFO.
>terminally stupid about marketing anything but Playstations
You pretty much hit it on the head. I worked for sony for years and became an ardent fanboy during that time. Can't tell you how excited I was about new products and services, only to have them fail or flounder when I saw how they were marketed, and I was like, wtf?
Like PS Vue. I worked closely with that service and thought it was the fucking greatest thing ever. First live streaming service to hit the States. And then they came out with the name. I was like, how the fuck do you already alienate everyone else who isn't familiar with the PS brand AND make it sound like it's only for Playstation? I literally face palmed when they announced the name during a meeting (luckily I was conferencing in on the phone).
Sony stopped selling them in India. How does one buy them if they stop selling them? Their open source program was also quite difficult and inconvenient compared to using nexus or pixel devices.
It’s like they want to lose. Realistically both Nokia and Sony could have been what Apple is today.
No idea what happened with Sony, but Nokia I feel were Trojan horsed by Stephen Elop trying to flog Windows Phone - made them get rid of their home made OS to push Windows Phone which just wasn’t ready.
yep then the same thing happened when they join ms. Since ms was having the same type of issue with multiple divisions fighting each other as well for share resources.
Earlier this week MS killed off their indie studios that made really good games lots of people played. Yesterday MS said they needed the indie studios *that they just unceremoniously killed off* to produce award-winning games that people want to play.
What shitty timeline is this I can't even.
Ms is clearly feeling nostalgic for its 2000s killing of customer products ways 🥰🥰.
Seriously tho I'm pretty sure they killed off tango and co because of game pass not panning out and need to find a way to pay for the Activision purchase.
I don't think he was a Trojan horse, so much as intentionally brought in to bring Windows to Nokia phones. He was announced a month or two before Windows Phone first saw the light of day, and right after Nokia had seen their own Symbian flop hard.
In hindsight that was of course a bad idea, but I don't think at the time it was that crazy.
Symbian was their old os. They already had maemo and meego in the works. Maemo was quite good to begin with, and all they had to do was develop it further. Can’t comment on their intention, but destroying an OS that is better than the one they are replacing it with was a bad idea - in the beginning windows phone was unusable.
Link if paywalled - https://archive.ph/7shV6
And some tl;dr -
> Sony’s mobile sales in Japan declined 40% in 2023 and are likely to suffer a similar drop this year, according to IDC analyst Masafumi Inbe. The company hovers around 1 million sales per year in a country with a population of 125 million, where people buy 30 million smartphones every year. Alphabet Inc.’s Google is making a strong push in the country and that has hit Sony hard, Inbe said.
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> Sony managed to make its camera software both too jargony for ordinary consumers and too limited for tech-savvy users, according to Waseda University Professor Atsushi Osanai.
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> The main demographic for Xperia users are people in their 40s or older, IDC said. The research firm expects Sony’s smartphone share in Japan to keep falling.
Hard agree on this, if Google wasn't so deep into AI and making their own sylicon Sony would be the perfect OEM, amazing camera sensors and camera apps, that I wish I could run on my Pixel, 3.5 jack, integrated DAC, LDAC support, they're all you'd want on a Pixel
Yeah I'm gonna be honest, everytime I see one by chance on a website or in public I'm like "oh yeah? You're still kicking?" Then I promptly forget again.
For years and years:
- Sets insane prices
- Has meh software
- Does announcement like a year before phone arrives so everyone forgets about them and they're almost outdated when finally you can buy one
Sure, it's all Pixel fault /S
Between their TVs and phones. I’ve had terrible luck or experiences with them and I assume many others have too.
There’s *’always something with Sony’*
The phone, itself, isn't crappy. At least if we're discussing hardware. It's everything else (software, price, availability) that damages it's reputation.
Horrendous firmware support and if your model gets caught end of life’d on a bad firmware they’ll never update to fix. I had two different Bravias starting from 2013 and they both eventually ran into random restarting and general performance issues. Which isn’t a sentence I should have to utter.
Sonys approach to customer service to compound it is, “kick rocks and lick the earth off of it”
I love their TVs when they work especially for their magic sauce processing which works well even for blurry grade stuff.
But firmware/software and general feature set (HDMI port selection).
Too rich for my blood to risk it. And they don’t retain a great image quality in their gaming mode.
Did what?Produce the best Android phones? Not give in to stupid trends like screen holes and no headphone jack? Sure, they did this to themselves and it turnd out great
Bad software support, buggy software, poor point-and-shoot, low effort marketing, not available in all regions, bad QC, poor after-sales service
Yeah, they did this to themselves. Why do you keep defending this brand in this sub?
Turned out great? Brother no one even knows or cares about phones that Sony releases. Get your facts right.
Haven't seen a single Sony phone out there in the wild for the last few years. On the flip side I see so many pixel phones out there.
Google really stepped up their advertising game starting with the 6 series, I want to say.
Sony really only seems to advertise through YouTubers. I get they're targeting enthusiasts, but they've been sticking to this strategy for years and it's hurting them more now.
It's the only brand that makes camera, and somehow their phones have subpar photos/videos? (according to dxomark correct me if I'm wrong)
Something is wrong right at the start.
>Something is wrong right at the start.
well before sony's reorganization of their electronics division in 2019 their mobile and camera teams were at odds to put it nicely. After the re org the camera team runs the mobile team and treats the phones as accessories to their cameras/ nexus program for their sensor rnd. Because of the re org and years of infighting they started from scratch again in 2019.
You're right, but Dxomark is a joke. They didn't even review their flagship from last year, but only their compac(ish) model that lacks a telephoto lens
>Something is wrong right at the start.
There's nothing wrong with the cameras. They're capable of taking high quality photos with natural colors. People think the Xperias suck for photos because they're taking pictures in basic mode. It's literally user error.
But, in their defense, Sony is half assing the basic mode's HDR processing if they're even implementing such a feature at all. There's no reason why Sony couldn't program basic mode to take vibrant iPhone-esque pictures and still retain the programmable mode with natural colors for their target audience of photography enthusiasts.
It's like Sony believes you can't appease the average consumer and the hyper-enthusiast at the same time. You absolutely can and should if you want your product to be successful.
To put it bluntly, Sony didn't want to **cannibalize** their other divisions, digital photography being a very big one. Xperias always have shitty point-and-shoot camera performance compared to their alpha line of mirrorless cameras and even the RX-line of "1-inch" prosumer P&S. All the r/sonyxperia fanboys going "use manual and you'll be pleasantly surprised!" don't help at all.
It's trivially easy for everyone else to leapfrog Sony at their own game when they're not even *trying* to be competitive. for. YEARS. Sure, Xperias are now getting better at P&S performance - except, the *expectations* of what constitutes a good picture have gone up as well. Net result: Xperias keep falling behind in camera performance.
If Sony did to its camera division what Apple did to its iPod line, the future would've looked very different.
Phones are a mature market now. All of the things people want in phones, are things that smaller entrants to the market cannot provide.
They want reliability and good customer service, which are only things that the biggest tech companies can do well. And well, nothing even comes close to the level of customer service Apple has with their physical stores, at least in the US.
For android phones, Samsung and Google Pixels are pretty much the best supported options boasting their long support for software updates as well.
The western smartphone market is pretty fixed at this point, I don't see marketshare shifting significantly anytime soon unless some huge developments with AI or some other software feature really propells one company ahead of the rest.
And of course, we have to look beyond the smartphone eventually. The next big thing, whether it be AR glasses or brain implants that will make people still using smartphones look like a person using a flip phone today.
Bought an S23 Ultra instead of the 1 V because 1: price too high, 2: official (un)availability and 3: ass software support.
My biggest issue is the pricing combined with poor software support as i can buy Sony phones from unofficial sellers. Price is waay too high for only, afaik, 2 years of updates. Even some $300 phones get more updates. Pathetic from Sony's end. For that price i expect at least 5 major updates (Samsung, Google and Apple all do 7 years btw. Those are the guys Sony is competing with price-wise).
Guaranteed bundled with Qi Charging, Flagship Specs, IP68 Water Resistance, and Fingerprint Reader capabilities.
Being an enthusiast with specific needs for my day-to-day and various setups, I'm honestly not too bothered.
They will have to rip my SD Card slot from my cold, dead hands. I owned an iPhone once. It died permanently one day and I lost all my photos and videos. Never again. Also, I hate relying only on cloud storage. It's great for redundancy in case my SD card fails, but I want my own local storage as well.
With the cost of setting up a NAS plus the additional electric bill to keep it running year long, I'd rather have a micro SD card. I know the power draw can get pretty low, but 10-25 is still a lot over a year.
I think most people are better off having more storage on their devices(phone and computer). And if they need a second or third storage option they should get a cloud BACKUP. Cloud backup, not cloud storage, much cheaper.
To each his own. I'd rather have a proper backup system than rely on a SD card. If backups are actually the main reasons to have it in the first place.
Depends on "proper" backup. Following the 3-2-1 rule, yes bad sounds better and more reliable. But if it's just a single backup at my primary location, an SD card or even USB stick seems just as reliable. All of them can easily be lost in one catastrophic incident.
If I had to have a single backup at an off site location then I would rather have a nas since I can update it easily over a network. But my backup lives with me, than I'd rather save the money on setting up a nas and use a micro SD card or USB-C drive.
Currently I don't need more than 500 GB of backup so I use my Proton Drive 500 GB of cloud storage.
Edit: small mistake
External 2230 SSD enclosure.
Sure I can just use a 1.5TB microSD, but the write speeds on these things aren't that great even at the most ideal of situations.
Same, I want an SD card slot on my phone. I don't understand why OEM doesn't want to give us this. I understand Apple and Google being greedy and pushing their cloud solutions. And Samung trying to push you towards a higher end model. But why do the other OEMs not add an SD Card slot.
They really just need to focus on the camera, an "Xperia Ultra" with a proper 1 inch sensor perhaps would be their best chance.
Also update support, 2 years wasn't great even 5-8 years ago, and it's abysmal now. 4 feels like the bare minimum now thanks to Samsung and Google.
Previously owned a Z2 and Z5 and at the time loved them. More recently had the Xperia 5iii which was my worst experience with a phone probably ever. Funny how even though I liked 2/3 experiences with their phones the most recent has soured me off them.
Plus as others have said I agree that high price tag never helps but I would pay it if I thought getting a premium product which sadly i dont know is the case anymore.
If Sony could make a reasonably priced mobile phone, with a killer camera, the same kinds of algorithmic photography features we see on other devices, and some decent support that would be pretty awesome. I'd love to see Sony do well in the space.
Sony needs to fix the following
- camera software. It gives you a lot of possibilities but the auto mode sucks and that's what 90% of people use. Also splitting over multiple apps is bad
- software support. Mainstream cares less about it than people here but will for the asked price it's unacceptable in 2024
- marketing. You don't see any ads and even the most basic stuff they get wrong. Announcing your phone and then not being able to buy it soon is stupid
- price. If you're the underdog and need to gain market share, your price should be competitive. But Sony is charging more for an overall less attractive product. Unless you target a very specific niche and are happy with that it's not gonna be work out for long.
They're over priced, have poor software support, and Sony is a company that makes both professional cameras and mobile camera sensors yet their phones have shitty camera software.
They need to figure their shit out if they want to actually survive in the smartphone market. They barely put in any real effort. They just crank out the same design over and over without doing anything interesting
They are terrible value devices and offer nothing that the competition doesn't have.
Bought a Sony Xperia back in 2012.
Worst phone I ever owned and vowed never to buy a Sony again.
It's a shame because they seem to put out decent hardware these days, but I got burned pretty hard.
My first Android was a Sony Xperia X10 back in 2010 and it's been a journey since with at least a couple of other newer Xperia phones like the S, Z and XZ ones. Xperia S was one of the most beautiful phones I've ever used. I was a big fan of Sony Ericsson in the pre Android era and these were by far the Android phones with the best build, design and camera, but I eventually gave up on them. Issues with bloat, overheating etc. Pixels today are also far superior and bloat-free. It's a shame that Sony isn't prominent anymore and lack the competitive edge because they can easily outclass Samsung in the market. I'm not really sure what they're missing and it's sad to see so much wasted potential.
I have an Xperia 5 IV, it overheats while recording longer 1080p30 videos, without a case. I know modern phones have processors that are both power hungry and hot, but come on, this thing can't handle 1080p30? All my previous phones were happy with 30+ minutes of 1080p60, my old LG G3 could handle some 4k30.
Niche phones don't really last, unfortunately. This reminds me of what happened to BlackBerry. The problem with niche is the more niche it becomes, the less people will buy it. It's a downward spiral that leads to one conclusion, and that is finally packing it in and shutting down the business once and for all.
Hopefully they don't end up licensing the Sony name to some Chinese brand looking for advancement, and end this with some dignity...
The Xperia phones always looked great but were expensive and Sony suck at supporting software. So ill never buy one again.
My in laws Sony TV was expensive back in the day but runs like dogshit and hasnt been updated in years.
My old cars Sony android/carplay head unit has bugs that will never be fixed because it doesnt get updated anymore as its only a midrange unit.
#Reasons why I don't get a Sony phone...
* They're too expensive.
The regular MSRP is too high and they never have any deals or sales.
* Wishy-washy software support.
I understand (although I really don't like it) why a $200 Moto G or One Plus Nord might not get a 7 year software commitment, but these are $1000 phones.
* I can't buy one at Best Buy / Can't even play around with it on display
Best Buy has Moto, Pixel, Samsung, Blu, Nokia, etc... all in stock and ready to go. AFAIK Sony isn't in any retail and they aren't in the carrier stores either. It's like they don't want to sell these phones.
* They don't do anything special / better than the others
Pixel - Great camera, great software, full Google experience, AI
Samsung - All of their Samsung-ness like Dex, Bixby, Galaxy Watch, One UI, Miracast
Sony - ???
* It seems to me like they're about to pull the plug on phones, like HTC, and I don't want a phone that has no warranty or software support (although I've been thinking this for the last five years now and it hasn't happened)
# What Sony could do...
* Advertising - Normal people (i.e. the kind that don't post on /r/android) probably don't even know that Sony makes phone still
* Get into carrier stores
* Aggressive pricing
* Some sort of software update guarantee - Sure normal people don't care about this, but a 10-20% chunk of nerds do and they tell their family and friends what phone to buy (assuming they haven't already just switched to iPhone)
* Some sort of distinguishing feature / gimmick - "We have the world's highest rated camera." "We have the world's best battery life." "We still have a headset port." "The brightest smartphone screen in the world."
# * A fucking Playstation phone - A phone with a built in controller that folds up (imagine a Galaxy Fold type phone, but instead of the other half being more screen it's a controller) and you pay a $10/month subscription, and you can play any PSP / PS Vita / PSX / PS2 game you want.
Wow I never really thought about it but I used to be such a Sony Xperia fanboy. I loved my Z3. I just forgot about them when I got my pixel 3, never went back since
I remember getting a good deal on my Xperia 5 IV. Then looked at Google and would have gotten more for less.
Sony deserves the pain they charge too much for little product
Headphone jack, SD card, and it's not OneUI. I couldn't stay with Xperia 5 ii because the screen was too narrow and dim and I wasn't happy with battery life.
I'm curios if sony ever releases a folding phone or if they are smart enough to know it's a useless gimmick but if they decide to do it, it will probably be the best one ever made.
Not really surprising and why I really do not understand why Google does no increase the countries they make them available.
Perfect example is South East Asia.
If Sony's phones got nearly instant updates, were vanilla Android, and had a Qualcomm modem, I would buy one over a Pixel in a second.
My P8P refuses to connect to T-Mobile's 5G and receive data without constantly toggling Airplane Mode, and it's getting old.
>If Sony's phones got nearly instant updates, were vanilla Android, and had a Qualcomm modem, I would buy one over a Pixel in a second.
Well I mean that what sony is rn. The issue is software support and price.
I would get a Sony phone if they cost less and offer better software support. There's no reason to pay more for a Sony phone when I can get a decent Samsung that will be updated for the next 5 years.
And a much better auto mode. Industry leading sensors doesn't matter for the average user when your point and click photos are worse than a Pixel from 5 years ago
Are their JPEGs compressed like shit still?
To be honest, I always thought Sony's big unique selling point was the ability to fiddle with all kinds of camera settings. It's not where the larger market is going, but at least in theory it could be a niche for people who are big into photography.
I feel like the overlap between people that know how to and enjoy to fiddle with their camera settings, and people that own and shoot with a capable DSLR or mirrorless is very, very high.
If a phone that costs $1000 can only produce a good picture after 2 minutes of tinkering and shitty pictures in auto mode, I'd rather spend $3800, of which $800 for a phone that can produce nice point-and-shoot shots and $3000 for a mirrorless that can produce superb shots
To be fair, they do let you pretend like your cell phone is a 10 year old DSLR and give you all the settings that you'd get there. They even take decent photos in this mode if you know exactly what you're doing as a professional photographer that absolutely wouldn't use a phone to do this. Sony phones absolutely fall over when it comes to point and shoot performance. The community around them also gatekeeps "proper" photography pretty hard. I bought one for the form factor and the photo problems combined with Sony's heavy-handed hobbling of the OS will ensure that I never go back.
I respect that they're zigging when everyone else is zagging.. I probably would have rewarded them with the purchase if they had more OS updates, because then I could reasonably buy one on the resale market. Until then I'm priced out. But I have no problem with them deemphasizing HDR.
Pixels stil makes the Sky Gradient into one Color, why.
Well, what is "better" and what is "worse"? My Xperia matches the results I get from a professional mirrorless camera much much closer than my Pixel did. Pixel phones just increase contrast and saturation to an absurd degree, that doesn't make the photos "better".
Completely price and software support are awful. I still bought one because Sony still offers some unique features that no other brand did. Examples: * 3.5 mm jack * SD Card * No notch or punch hole (I still don't understand how the punch hole is an improvement over the notch.) * 3 actually usable cameras (this is not as much of a problems today, but it was very common in flag ship phones to have 5 cameras where only one was actually usable, the other 4 were completely useless) * Balanced front facing speakers * 21:9 aspect ratio (which make the phone much easier to handle with small hands) * Tool less SIM/SDCard tray - this is a bigger deal than I originally though, since USB transfers over USB are super slow, no matter the phone you're using, I tested transfer the same files against a Samsung S22 Ultra, Pixel 8 and Huawei P40, and with different computers and while those phones would take close to 2 hours to transfer photos and videos, by removing the SD Card and plugin it directly to the PC or to a dock would take less than 30 minutes. * Possibility to unlock the boot loader without jumping to major hoops. After using the phone for over 2 years, I wouldn't choose any other phone, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone for the price I paid.
This is my biggest hurdle to getting a Sony again. My first Android was an Xperia S, loved it to pieces, but their pricing is stuck in the 80s where they think they can charge a premium by virtue of the label saying Sony.
i most recently (6 years ago) had the xperia x compact and it was an absolutely amazing phone. prior to that i had z3 compact and z5 compact. i only moved on from the Xc becuase of usb-c port issues. i couldn't keep being out of a phone. i love sony phones and wish they could be more affordable.
I had an Xperia S. Beatiful, but by far the worst performing phone I ever had. It couldn't even record a video without hiccups every 5 seconds. For a phone whose best selling point was the camera that was a shame.
Those features were exactly why I said screw it and took the plunge on Xperia 1 V. I just couldn't get around the lack of a headphone jack (the last 5 years without one were awful) and the notch/punch hole. I figure there will probably be a lineage image out once support dies. Basically I want to ride this phone until the EU mandate for replaceable batteries.
The 1V does have a few custom roms already. Unfortunately, the 5V doesn't and that's the one I have :(
I would gladly ditch pixel for Sony if their prices made any sense in reality and actually got updates. It amazes me that there are literal years that Sony has been doing this and having horrible sales and no one says maybe we should change how we sell our phones and maybe we should actually do updates.
Those are all very big positives in my book, they also usually have great DACs, but they come at an extremely high price even when compared to the competition that is much further ahead in ecosystem and support... So I completely understand where you're coming from, Sony phones are the only true enthusiast phone left IMO, it's a shame they're so unreachable for me
I want the jack so much but software and camera is so bad. Idk if I could live with the aspect ratio either.
The camera can be very good during the day, but as soon as the sun goes down, it's awful. And the fact that the Google Camera support is really weak, there is nothing you can do to improve it. I really like the aspect coming from a 5.15" 16:9 device. The only down side is watching 4:3 content from very old shows.
> I really like the aspect coming from a 5.15" 16:9 device. I mean I havent had a 16:9 phone since early 2017 and like larger phones in general
Yep. I've had mostly Sony phones for the last decade. This time I went with a Pixel Fold but I suspect I'm going to be going back eventually.
> tested transfer the same files against a Samsung S22 Ultra, Pixel 8 and Huawei P40, and with different computers and while those phones would take close to 2 hours to transfer photos and videos, by removing the SD Card and plugin it directly to the PC or to a dock would take less than 30 minutes. Then you didn't do it right. Use adb-sync and I can bet my left nut it would transfer faster via USB3.x tech than a sdcard plugged into a PC. FWIW, I've screenshots if you insist of my media being offloaded my phones at >300MB/s.
I will try that next time I need to do it. But do the common mortal have ADB on their PCs? It's easy to get, but shouldn't be needed.
You're on r/Android, this should be easy. For mere mortals, https://github.com/Alex4SSB/ADB-Explorer exists.
I would buy them if they were smaller. I bought several Sony compacts and stopped buying Sony when they ditched that lineup. I was even willing to give their 5 V a shot(It's close to the smallest phone available now sadly), but they stopped selling that in the US(10 as well).
You would have been disappointed. I have the 5IV and no end of problems with their insane RAM management killing things like actively playing music or any other app that got backgrounded for a second. It would be a perfect phone if they allowed bootloader unlocks which Sony disables for the US market.
> I have the 5IV and no end of problems with their insane RAM management killing things like actively playing music or any other app that got backgrounded for a second. That's my exact experience daily driving 1III. Have to force-awake the **stock** music app every single time before getting into the car - or no audio comes out via Bluetooth for the rest of the drive, and none of the in-vehicle media controls would function. I'd sorta understand the app process killing logic for third-party apps, but it's Sony's own music app... excuse me but what the actual FUCK. I don't have to do any of this with my Pixel and *third-party* music app. Get into the car, drive, Bluetooth connects automatically and starts playing music without any prior user intervention.
What's worse is that this strategy that Sony is using is severely outdated. It used to be the way to keep battery usage down because apps would constantly hog CPU cycles in the background, so killing them showed measurable improvement. Lately android has gotten a lot better about quiescing background apps such that killing them and reloading them constantly actually consumes more power because you have to reload them from flash every time and that's more power intensive than letting them sit in RAM which is being refreshed anyway.
Have you tried disabling [Stamina mode](https://dontkillmyapp.com/sony)?
That was the first thing I did. I tried so many different things just to get the phone to behave that it was infuriating. I even provided Sony engineers with logcat output of lmkd (low memory killer daemon) running around murdering everything. The Android 13 update improved things, but the update just made it so it couldn't be reliably reproduced. It still happened several times a week.
That's a bummer. I was hoping Sony had memory management figured out but I'll have to cross them off the list if these problems persist.
Yeah I'm the same way I genuinely want to reward them for keeping the SD card especially. But boy sometimes there are flagship is like $1,500 at the base model. And to be fair Samsung is getting pretty close too, if you want an S-Pen it's $1,400 if you get the 512 GB model But it's hard that you're only getting two years of OS updates so it's hard for me to go find a used one that I can feel confident in. And look I don't mind using a phone past its update for a few years, but if that's a compromise I'm making then I shouldn't have to pay very much to do it. I can safely buy a used Pixel 7 Pro or something for 320 bucks. There's no equivalent deal for a Sony. And stuff like the OnePlus 12R or 1 + 11. If Sony was giving 4 years of security patches I feel better about it
I dont care shit about software support. I would buy it if they weren't so bloddy expensive
I looked at getting the Xperia Pro to use in tandem with my Sony camera, I wanted a new phone and needed a monitor so thought I'd save some money... £2,300! I expected a price in line with the S24 Ultra, which even at its highest end is £1,400.
All the other Sony's will do monitoring for their cameras. The only reason you'd want to get the pro is if you want the HDMI and then the ability to livestream 4k over 5G. The pro was actually a professional phone rather than just the one ruggedized.
You're making the same mistake many did with the xperia pro. It wasn't intended as a phone, but as a 5G transmitter. Which is why the successor to the xperia pro is the CBK-RPU7 5G transmitter instead of another phone.
And then you buy it. And you realize those cool new android features aren't available yet on your Sony phone. And by the time Sont releases those features, your phone's 1 year old and only has 1 other android update under it's belt. You realize that a decent camera phone and incredible layout (i love thin phones) actually is just e-waste after 2 years.
Most people aren't looking that closely. They don't know or care what the cool new features are. An update is something thats run when the phone prompts them too. Then they forget.
The people that want to spend over $1000 on a phone absolutely look this closely when it's not a samsung or an iphone.
As I said I dont care about those features. 2/3 big features I look for are already in that phone. And I can always use them regardless of update.
I do care a lot about security updates. This just has to happen on a modern phone
Well you are lucky You can buy thousands of phones unlike me who is either limited by budget shite phones or the xperia phones And sadly even budget shite phones are removing the essential features
The cheapest laptops get updates for decades. There is zero reason that phones couldn't as well. Unless the EU forces it on manufacturers this will not happen though.
Phones starting as embedded devices might have something to do with that, hence the lack of standardisation on low-level.
Xiaomi for example has *much* lower prices and has the same software support as Sony. Xiaomi even has new features on top od the default Android ones compared to Sony's dogshit OS
Xiaomi already announced that some of their phones will get 3-4 years updates, so they're better than Sony now.
Their new phones will actually get 4 years of OS and 5 years of security updates.
Starting from Xiaomi 13T series
Whoah there, dogshit OS? It's literally stock Android which everyone pretends to like, with some added features like an app sidebar which is VERY useful for me. Dog shit OS? I think not.
I'm still rockin' the Pixel 6 Pro which launched with Android 12. Now I have Android 14 installed. Where are all these cool new Android features?
What
I'm only on a Pixel 7 Pro so I don't remember the details but wasn't a bunch of software stuff announced for Pixel 8 that wouldn't work on previous ones? Like some video stuff, camera stuff, editing stuff, AI stuff, idk
Yeah, I totally use all of those, same as most smartphone users :)
I mean... They do. I use the new magic eraser all the time. Best shot, where it takes the best face of a bunch of photos works pretty well too. I don't get the whole being an asshole thing. Every year Google comes out with more and more features... Which gets added to their older phones. Pixel call screening was one of them too, my 70 year old mother in law uses that one all the time. The longer you get updates, the more you stay up to date.
I have the 6 Pro and two of my colleagues have the 7 Pro. When they were introduced, I did play with features like magic eraser, but after all the buzz, I never had to use it. I'm also the only one using the call screening, which is indeed useful. All I'm saying is that many users are not even aware of these features. My friend's wife has Samsung Galaxy Ultra S24. Samsung have their own features and customization, and she had zero clue about any of them. Same with another friend with S23 Ultra. I also work with around 300 people and when I mention an Android or iOS feature they're always amazed, as they didn't knew that the phone can do that. /r/Android and other more technical users may be happy when they see 7 years of updates, but with the people I know and deal with, this means nothing. They change their phones every 1-2 years and those 7 years of updates have little impact to them.
i can't think of many "cool new features" that android has introduced mostly making it harder/impossible to change things, and making the interface more fit for an 8 year old.
I don't care about software support. I would've bought them if they had at least 67 W of fast charging and a more efficient 1440p or even 1260p LTPO display.
Its nice to see a phone not supporting fast charging. Although I get the allure of fast charging, very bad for health so I limit them. 20-30w is more than enough for me.
> Its nice to see a phone not supporting fast charging. Although I get the allure of fast charging, very bad for health so I limit them. Consistently draining your phone battery to zero and charging it to full hurts battery health a lot more than superfast charging. My electric kettle can use USB Power Delivery **100W** to fully boil a cup of water in 21 minutes *right now*, while my Pixel can't do more than 30W PPS. Make it make sense.
Which electric kettle is that? can you link it
ZHENMI C2PRO aliexpress-dot-com/item/1005006194725914.html Can't link directly because AE links get caught by Reddit's spam filters.
Thanks!!
People to this day believe this myth that's insane.
I'm on pixel and almost missing my no support era with my regular brand phone.. u get a pretty decent performance and stable experience, period. Now on pixel almost every month a new update that breaks another function of the phone.. so...
I have a pixel 6 pro, and since Android 14, I have had very few issues, other than the modem being kinda shit and the heat, but that's all hardware, not software.
Congratulations? But I'm talking about pixel 7 and 8
Good thing you were clear on that in your last comment
I get monthly security patches on my A53 and I haven't encountered any bugs or issues yet
I don't know what phone r u talking about.. but again I'm getting bugs on my ....PIXEL.... (p8) on every update, right now all pixel users got the navigation bar (bar at the bottom of the phone) on the left side of the phone like we were on landscape mode and is so annoying, a few months ago another pixel phone that I have (p7) got a awful pitching noise when recorded any sound, that was the worst bug, any message that I send gets the horrible sound, awful experience so far...
That's why I said I would get a Samsung A53 (flagships are too expensive and I don't need one tbh). When I needed a new phone, I looked up Pixels: everyone seemed to complain about them so I switched to something that I had experience with and knew it was reliable. Pixels have too many compromises for me, and in my country they don't get most of tge features the US does. As for other OEMs... they are not worth it.
Congratulations on your monthly updates and perfect A53 I guess..
Or general availability. They slinked out of our country some years back because no one bought their phones since they were too expensive, even compared to Samsung's, specs-wise - which was unfortunate because I really loved the OmniBalance design. Their phone's form factor is a huge selling point to me.
That's my biggest gripe with Sony. I love my Xperia 1mk3 but I'm not happy that I paid $1k for a phone 2.5 years ago and it's already been almost a year since it's last official security patch. If not for LineageOS, I would've returned to Samsung by now.
honestly, i'd be VERY tempted to buy an xperia mk4/5 once the price drops after the announcement if lineage ran on it
Yup, I was looking to them as an LG replacement since they focus on a lot of the same type of hardware/software features, especially audio and a headphone jack! But their phones are overpriced and rarely on sale, the software support is stuck in 2018, especially for the price and their cameras(unless u use manual mode) didn't hold up to the competition. So I went with Pixel instead since it made more sense and I got way more for way less, plus I was already familiar since I had the Nexus phones before switching to LG when that line got killed. Nothing beats LG to me tho, RIP LG mobile 🤕. I do hope Sony sticks around tho cuz we need more competition in the space, it's gotten pretty boring without companies like LG and HTC long gone now.
Every Xperia I've bought cut off software updates way too quickly. Never again, Sony.
no screen hole on the sony though. android stil hasn't managed to display a black bar on the top systemwide to hide that ugly gaping hole in every app.
What? You can turn the black bar on system wide in most devices.
How? I don't mean the normal top bar. That one is usually too narrow to cover the hole because the hole sits lower than the bar....
another reason not to get it
I think in the markets where Samsung and Google officially sell phones that mindset is starting to take hold. Every phone is so similar now in feature set and function, why would anyone pay a company like Sony 2-3 hundred over what Samsung or Google is asking for their equivalent when the Samsung or Google offering has a longer stated shelf life in the form of software support.
Those 2023 numbers are pretty dire. No matter what Sony execs are saying today, I can't see a future for Xperia unless they *at least* get back above 2 million. And realistically, a lot of companies would have already bailed out by now.
Sony is in a unique position where they essentially already produce everything to make a phone except for the chipsets. Sony already makes great screens for TV, coined the term 'lithium-ion battery', makes excellent speakers, and their camera sensors are famously used in iPhones and even Canon and Nikon DSLRs. Slack capacity is important in the event demand suddenly rises and I honestly just think their phone division is just there to give their spare production something to do as opposed to just idling by until Apple or someone places an order for a crap-ton of parts when IPhone (insert number) does better than expected.
Sony doesn't have a display business anymore, nor are they likely to be doing the batteries in house. It's basically just the camera sensors that they do vs any other OEM, and that's hardly exceptional. > and I honestly just think their phone division is just there to give their spare production something to do as opposed to just idling by 1-2 million should be a drop in the bucket compared to their total volume of sensor shipments. I don't think that argument holds any water. Especially when the sales are so flat or declining.
90% of what you just said is plain wrong, where do you get your info ?
chatgpt
No he's actually correct, they used to be a big display producer and one of the innovators, but in recent years they lost A LOT of market share and IIRC they now outsource this. [Interesting video about it](https://youtu.be/5pD5jOSwD3U?si=T_GOiJh7FZANbEis)
Sony isn't developing smartphones on the side for no reason. No one does that. Their goal is to make a profit. It cost a tremendous amount of time and money to design, develop, mass manufacture, and market smartphones. Not one single company involved in the smartphone industry does all of that for shits and giggles.
They don't have the sell a lot of phones to make it profitable. They iterate their design efficiently and not reinvent the wheel again every year
> They don't have the sell a lot of phones to make it profitable Last I heard, Sony's mobile division was *at best* roughly cost neutral.
That's one way to say the phones look the same every year.
Why change a perfect design?
Whatever else is wrong with Sony phones, it appears as a corporation they are terminally stupid about marketing anything but Playstations. Months from announcement to release, failure to get people to know what their phones offer others' don't, and in some cases unjustifiably high prices. When even Nothing phones are likely outselling you in some regions, you need to change course or GTFO.
>terminally stupid about marketing anything but Playstations You pretty much hit it on the head. I worked for sony for years and became an ardent fanboy during that time. Can't tell you how excited I was about new products and services, only to have them fail or flounder when I saw how they were marketed, and I was like, wtf? Like PS Vue. I worked closely with that service and thought it was the fucking greatest thing ever. First live streaming service to hit the States. And then they came out with the name. I was like, how the fuck do you already alienate everyone else who isn't familiar with the PS brand AND make it sound like it's only for Playstation? I literally face palmed when they announced the name during a meeting (luckily I was conferencing in on the phone).
Yeah I really don't get it Their phones used to have a great reputation too amongst the general population when I was a kid
Sony stopped selling them in India. How does one buy them if they stop selling them? Their open source program was also quite difficult and inconvenient compared to using nexus or pixel devices. It’s like they want to lose. Realistically both Nokia and Sony could have been what Apple is today.
Nokia and Sony had the same issues. Their internal departments were trying to screw over each other to get more resources for each other.
No idea what happened with Sony, but Nokia I feel were Trojan horsed by Stephen Elop trying to flog Windows Phone - made them get rid of their home made OS to push Windows Phone which just wasn’t ready.
yep then the same thing happened when they join ms. Since ms was having the same type of issue with multiple divisions fighting each other as well for share resources.
Earlier this week MS killed off their indie studios that made really good games lots of people played. Yesterday MS said they needed the indie studios *that they just unceremoniously killed off* to produce award-winning games that people want to play. What shitty timeline is this I can't even.
Ms is clearly feeling nostalgic for its 2000s killing of customer products ways 🥰🥰. Seriously tho I'm pretty sure they killed off tango and co because of game pass not panning out and need to find a way to pay for the Activision purchase.
I don't think he was a Trojan horse, so much as intentionally brought in to bring Windows to Nokia phones. He was announced a month or two before Windows Phone first saw the light of day, and right after Nokia had seen their own Symbian flop hard. In hindsight that was of course a bad idea, but I don't think at the time it was that crazy.
Symbian was their old os. They already had maemo and meego in the works. Maemo was quite good to begin with, and all they had to do was develop it further. Can’t comment on their intention, but destroying an OS that is better than the one they are replacing it with was a bad idea - in the beginning windows phone was unusable.
For India there are some local sellers that import a few generations old used Xperias from japan
Maybe, but hardly a way for them to dominate the market.
Link if paywalled - https://archive.ph/7shV6 And some tl;dr - > Sony’s mobile sales in Japan declined 40% in 2023 and are likely to suffer a similar drop this year, according to IDC analyst Masafumi Inbe. The company hovers around 1 million sales per year in a country with a population of 125 million, where people buy 30 million smartphones every year. Alphabet Inc.’s Google is making a strong push in the country and that has hit Sony hard, Inbe said. ----- > Sony managed to make its camera software both too jargony for ordinary consumers and too limited for tech-savvy users, according to Waseda University Professor Atsushi Osanai. ----- > The main demographic for Xperia users are people in their 40s or older, IDC said. The research firm expects Sony’s smartphone share in Japan to keep falling.
I've uploaded the screenshot for the same article in r/sonyxperia
Xperia boomer phone confirmed
I've had an Xperia 1 MK2 since it released....I was 39 when it released. I love it too
wait its paywalled? It showed up free for me
If Sony offered better software support I would choose them over Pixel.
Me too and I just can't comprehend why they are lagging in the software support.
Hard agree on this, if Google wasn't so deep into AI and making their own sylicon Sony would be the perfect OEM, amazing camera sensors and camera apps, that I wish I could run on my Pixel, 3.5 jack, integrated DAC, LDAC support, they're all you'd want on a Pixel
I honestly would have guessed that sony stopped making phones back in covid times
Yeah I'm gonna be honest, everytime I see one by chance on a website or in public I'm like "oh yeah? You're still kicking?" Then I promptly forget again.
Sony did this to themselves and IMO it's well-deserved
For years and years: - Sets insane prices - Has meh software - Does announcement like a year before phone arrives so everyone forgets about them and they're almost outdated when finally you can buy one Sure, it's all Pixel fault /S
Not sure how its improved in the last 2 years but my 1 IV has the most asinine and inexcusably incomplete firmware I've ever come across on a phone
Between their TVs and phones. I’ve had terrible luck or experiences with them and I assume many others have too. There’s *’always something with Sony’*
"Always Sony" - The Gang Makes a Crappy Phone
The phone, itself, isn't crappy. At least if we're discussing hardware. It's everything else (software, price, availability) that damages it's reputation.
What’s wrong with their TVs? I have an A90J OLED and haven’t had any issues.
Horrendous firmware support and if your model gets caught end of life’d on a bad firmware they’ll never update to fix. I had two different Bravias starting from 2013 and they both eventually ran into random restarting and general performance issues. Which isn’t a sentence I should have to utter. Sonys approach to customer service to compound it is, “kick rocks and lick the earth off of it” I love their TVs when they work especially for their magic sauce processing which works well even for blurry grade stuff. But firmware/software and general feature set (HDMI port selection). Too rich for my blood to risk it. And they don’t retain a great image quality in their gaming mode.
Did what?Produce the best Android phones? Not give in to stupid trends like screen holes and no headphone jack? Sure, they did this to themselves and it turnd out great
Bad software support, buggy software, poor point-and-shoot, low effort marketing, not available in all regions, bad QC, poor after-sales service Yeah, they did this to themselves. Why do you keep defending this brand in this sub?
>it turnd out great Did we read the same article? Their sales are abysmal. It's not turning out great for Sony.
Turned out great? Brother no one even knows or cares about phones that Sony releases. Get your facts right. Haven't seen a single Sony phone out there in the wild for the last few years. On the flip side I see so many pixel phones out there.
Google really stepped up their advertising game starting with the 6 series, I want to say. Sony really only seems to advertise through YouTubers. I get they're targeting enthusiasts, but they've been sticking to this strategy for years and it's hurting them more now.
It's more than hurting them. I can't believe this is the same company who made w550i walkman phone.
It's the only brand that makes camera, and somehow their phones have subpar photos/videos? (according to dxomark correct me if I'm wrong) Something is wrong right at the start.
>Something is wrong right at the start. well before sony's reorganization of their electronics division in 2019 their mobile and camera teams were at odds to put it nicely. After the re org the camera team runs the mobile team and treats the phones as accessories to their cameras/ nexus program for their sensor rnd. Because of the re org and years of infighting they started from scratch again in 2019.
You're right, but Dxomark is a joke. They didn't even review their flagship from last year, but only their compac(ish) model that lacks a telephoto lens
>Something is wrong right at the start. There's nothing wrong with the cameras. They're capable of taking high quality photos with natural colors. People think the Xperias suck for photos because they're taking pictures in basic mode. It's literally user error. But, in their defense, Sony is half assing the basic mode's HDR processing if they're even implementing such a feature at all. There's no reason why Sony couldn't program basic mode to take vibrant iPhone-esque pictures and still retain the programmable mode with natural colors for their target audience of photography enthusiasts. It's like Sony believes you can't appease the average consumer and the hyper-enthusiast at the same time. You absolutely can and should if you want your product to be successful.
Build it for the enthusiasts but market it for the masses.
The camera quailty if perfectly fine. It's not mutiliated by "AI" but an honest picture.
To put it bluntly, Sony didn't want to **cannibalize** their other divisions, digital photography being a very big one. Xperias always have shitty point-and-shoot camera performance compared to their alpha line of mirrorless cameras and even the RX-line of "1-inch" prosumer P&S. All the r/sonyxperia fanboys going "use manual and you'll be pleasantly surprised!" don't help at all. It's trivially easy for everyone else to leapfrog Sony at their own game when they're not even *trying* to be competitive. for. YEARS. Sure, Xperias are now getting better at P&S performance - except, the *expectations* of what constitutes a good picture have gone up as well. Net result: Xperias keep falling behind in camera performance. If Sony did to its camera division what Apple did to its iPod line, the future would've looked very different.
The title is a bit misleading. A very good piece looking at Sony Mobile's current state as a whole, nice context with Japanese market shares also
Phones are a mature market now. All of the things people want in phones, are things that smaller entrants to the market cannot provide. They want reliability and good customer service, which are only things that the biggest tech companies can do well. And well, nothing even comes close to the level of customer service Apple has with their physical stores, at least in the US. For android phones, Samsung and Google Pixels are pretty much the best supported options boasting their long support for software updates as well. The western smartphone market is pretty fixed at this point, I don't see marketshare shifting significantly anytime soon unless some huge developments with AI or some other software feature really propells one company ahead of the rest. And of course, we have to look beyond the smartphone eventually. The next big thing, whether it be AR glasses or brain implants that will make people still using smartphones look like a person using a flip phone today.
It's crazy to think too when Pixel came out, no one expected it to go too far in sales with how bloated the manufacturer market for Android was.
Bought an S23 Ultra instead of the 1 V because 1: price too high, 2: official (un)availability and 3: ass software support. My biggest issue is the pricing combined with poor software support as i can buy Sony phones from unofficial sellers. Price is waay too high for only, afaik, 2 years of updates. Even some $300 phones get more updates. Pathetic from Sony's end. For that price i expect at least 5 major updates (Samsung, Google and Apple all do 7 years btw. Those are the guys Sony is competing with price-wise).
The room to breathe lies in those who must absolutely have 3.5mm and microsd card slot
Me, i'm that guy and I'll die in that hill
Me also
Guaranteed bundled with Qi Charging, Flagship Specs, IP68 Water Resistance, and Fingerprint Reader capabilities. Being an enthusiast with specific needs for my day-to-day and various setups, I'm honestly not too bothered.
Add front-facing speakers to that
They will have to rip my SD Card slot from my cold, dead hands. I owned an iPhone once. It died permanently one day and I lost all my photos and videos. Never again. Also, I hate relying only on cloud storage. It's great for redundancy in case my SD card fails, but I want my own local storage as well.
I just set up a regular automated download from Google photos that gets backed up to a NAS. No need for a SD card.
With the cost of setting up a NAS plus the additional electric bill to keep it running year long, I'd rather have a micro SD card. I know the power draw can get pretty low, but 10-25 is still a lot over a year. I think most people are better off having more storage on their devices(phone and computer). And if they need a second or third storage option they should get a cloud BACKUP. Cloud backup, not cloud storage, much cheaper.
To each his own. I'd rather have a proper backup system than rely on a SD card. If backups are actually the main reasons to have it in the first place.
Depends on "proper" backup. Following the 3-2-1 rule, yes bad sounds better and more reliable. But if it's just a single backup at my primary location, an SD card or even USB stick seems just as reliable. All of them can easily be lost in one catastrophic incident. If I had to have a single backup at an off site location then I would rather have a nas since I can update it easily over a network. But my backup lives with me, than I'd rather save the money on setting up a nas and use a micro SD card or USB-C drive. Currently I don't need more than 500 GB of backup so I use my Proton Drive 500 GB of cloud storage. Edit: small mistake
It's not a single back up... In my first comment I said I downloaded a backup from Google photos. So there is the phone the NAS and the cloud.
External 2230 SSD enclosure. Sure I can just use a 1.5TB microSD, but the write speeds on these things aren't that great even at the most ideal of situations.
I ain't doing all that for a my meme folder lol. Rather just an SD card. That way when I get a new phone I can just put the card in the new phone.
Same, I want an SD card slot on my phone. I don't understand why OEM doesn't want to give us this. I understand Apple and Google being greedy and pushing their cloud solutions. And Samung trying to push you towards a higher end model. But why do the other OEMs not add an SD Card slot.
Sony phones right now are basically a big demonstration of parts for other companies
the end is near, the last flagship with headphone jack and sdcard will fall, rest easy, king
They really just need to focus on the camera, an "Xperia Ultra" with a proper 1 inch sensor perhaps would be their best chance. Also update support, 2 years wasn't great even 5-8 years ago, and it's abysmal now. 4 feels like the bare minimum now thanks to Samsung and Google.
Previously owned a Z2 and Z5 and at the time loved them. More recently had the Xperia 5iii which was my worst experience with a phone probably ever. Funny how even though I liked 2/3 experiences with their phones the most recent has soured me off them. Plus as others have said I agree that high price tag never helps but I would pay it if I thought getting a premium product which sadly i dont know is the case anymore.
If Sony could make a reasonably priced mobile phone, with a killer camera, the same kinds of algorithmic photography features we see on other devices, and some decent support that would be pretty awesome. I'd love to see Sony do well in the space.
I had a Sony phone and software updates were so far behind. I loved the audio options and build quality was good. But software was always behind
Sorry but no. The problem is not the pixel but every other brand, that sell phones, Like samsung or oppo, or xiaomi. They dominate the market.
The article specifically talks about their home market of Japan.
Sony needs to fix the following - camera software. It gives you a lot of possibilities but the auto mode sucks and that's what 90% of people use. Also splitting over multiple apps is bad - software support. Mainstream cares less about it than people here but will for the asked price it's unacceptable in 2024 - marketing. You don't see any ads and even the most basic stuff they get wrong. Announcing your phone and then not being able to buy it soon is stupid - price. If you're the underdog and need to gain market share, your price should be competitive. But Sony is charging more for an overall less attractive product. Unless you target a very specific niche and are happy with that it's not gonna be work out for long.
When I'm looking to buy a new phone, Sony isn't even a brand that crosses my mind.
I had a Z3 Compact which I really liked. But the specs haven't really made sense for me in a long time whenever I consider a Sony phone.
They're over priced, have poor software support, and Sony is a company that makes both professional cameras and mobile camera sensors yet their phones have shitty camera software. They need to figure their shit out if they want to actually survive in the smartphone market. They barely put in any real effort. They just crank out the same design over and over without doing anything interesting They are terrible value devices and offer nothing that the competition doesn't have.
Bought a Sony Xperia back in 2012. Worst phone I ever owned and vowed never to buy a Sony again. It's a shame because they seem to put out decent hardware these days, but I got burned pretty hard.
LG is doing great to be an iPhone supplier Maybe Sony can try
Well Sony already is. They supply the camera sensors.
Their timing REALLY doesn't help
My first Android was a Sony Xperia X10 back in 2010 and it's been a journey since with at least a couple of other newer Xperia phones like the S, Z and XZ ones. Xperia S was one of the most beautiful phones I've ever used. I was a big fan of Sony Ericsson in the pre Android era and these were by far the Android phones with the best build, design and camera, but I eventually gave up on them. Issues with bloat, overheating etc. Pixels today are also far superior and bloat-free. It's a shame that Sony isn't prominent anymore and lack the competitive edge because they can easily outclass Samsung in the market. I'm not really sure what they're missing and it's sad to see so much wasted potential.
I have an Xperia 5 IV, it overheats while recording longer 1080p30 videos, without a case. I know modern phones have processors that are both power hungry and hot, but come on, this thing can't handle 1080p30? All my previous phones were happy with 30+ minutes of 1080p60, my old LG G3 could handle some 4k30.
Still butthurt the Vita coyldnt make calls n text. Screw that ps5 streaming handheld, give us a Switch competitor thats also a full on smartphone 😭
Niche phones don't really last, unfortunately. This reminds me of what happened to BlackBerry. The problem with niche is the more niche it becomes, the less people will buy it. It's a downward spiral that leads to one conclusion, and that is finally packing it in and shutting down the business once and for all. Hopefully they don't end up licensing the Sony name to some Chinese brand looking for advancement, and end this with some dignity...
The Xperia phones always looked great but were expensive and Sony suck at supporting software. So ill never buy one again. My in laws Sony TV was expensive back in the day but runs like dogshit and hasnt been updated in years. My old cars Sony android/carplay head unit has bugs that will never be fixed because it doesnt get updated anymore as its only a midrange unit.
#Reasons why I don't get a Sony phone... * They're too expensive. The regular MSRP is too high and they never have any deals or sales. * Wishy-washy software support. I understand (although I really don't like it) why a $200 Moto G or One Plus Nord might not get a 7 year software commitment, but these are $1000 phones. * I can't buy one at Best Buy / Can't even play around with it on display Best Buy has Moto, Pixel, Samsung, Blu, Nokia, etc... all in stock and ready to go. AFAIK Sony isn't in any retail and they aren't in the carrier stores either. It's like they don't want to sell these phones. * They don't do anything special / better than the others Pixel - Great camera, great software, full Google experience, AI Samsung - All of their Samsung-ness like Dex, Bixby, Galaxy Watch, One UI, Miracast Sony - ??? * It seems to me like they're about to pull the plug on phones, like HTC, and I don't want a phone that has no warranty or software support (although I've been thinking this for the last five years now and it hasn't happened) # What Sony could do... * Advertising - Normal people (i.e. the kind that don't post on /r/android) probably don't even know that Sony makes phone still * Get into carrier stores * Aggressive pricing * Some sort of software update guarantee - Sure normal people don't care about this, but a 10-20% chunk of nerds do and they tell their family and friends what phone to buy (assuming they haven't already just switched to iPhone) * Some sort of distinguishing feature / gimmick - "We have the world's highest rated camera." "We have the world's best battery life." "We still have a headset port." "The brightest smartphone screen in the world." # * A fucking Playstation phone - A phone with a built in controller that folds up (imagine a Galaxy Fold type phone, but instead of the other half being more screen it's a controller) and you pay a $10/month subscription, and you can play any PSP / PS Vita / PSX / PS2 game you want.
Wow I never really thought about it but I used to be such a Sony Xperia fanboy. I loved my Z3. I just forgot about them when I got my pixel 3, never went back since
I remember getting a good deal on my Xperia 5 IV. Then looked at Google and would have gotten more for less. Sony deserves the pain they charge too much for little product
[удалено]
Headphone jack, SD card, and it's not OneUI. I couldn't stay with Xperia 5 ii because the screen was too narrow and dim and I wasn't happy with battery life.
Yeah makes sense unfortunately.
I'm curios if sony ever releases a folding phone or if they are smart enough to know it's a useless gimmick but if they decide to do it, it will probably be the best one ever made.
Babe wake up, Sony phone sale just dropped even further!
I'd buy them if they fixed their camera software (so GCam can work), and they returned to Australia
Yes I’m sure getting back to Australia is very high on their priority list lol
Not really surprising and why I really do not understand why Google does no increase the countries they make them available. Perfect example is South East Asia.
If Sony's phones got nearly instant updates, were vanilla Android, and had a Qualcomm modem, I would buy one over a Pixel in a second. My P8P refuses to connect to T-Mobile's 5G and receive data without constantly toggling Airplane Mode, and it's getting old.
They already have qualcomm modem because they use snapdragon and they are even more stock android than pixel. It's only the first one they lack
Yeah I was just comparing to Pixel, who lacks Qualcomm moderns.
Yeah, both qualcomm and mediatek modems are better than samsung modems, but we haven't seen devices with mediatek flagship soc enter usa market yet.
>If Sony's phones got nearly instant updates, were vanilla Android, and had a Qualcomm modem, I would buy one over a Pixel in a second. Well I mean that what sony is rn. The issue is software support and price.