I upgrade less than I used to, and I only do mid-range devices now, like the Pixel A series or Motorola G series. That kind of bracket. I’m just going to install Lineage OS on it anyway and it works fine so why pay more when I don’t need that.
Praying the Xperia 5 VI is a bit more compact that the previous iteration. That and Sony actually start supporting their services for at least 5 years -_-
It probably is if the rumour about them switching to a 19.5:9 resolution is true. It’ll still be larger than the S24 and Pixel 8 because of the top and bottom bezel but height should decrease by a couple of mm.
Yeah, the lack of software support made me disregard the Xperia completely (well and its price), which is sad because it is otherwise a great phone with actual useful features that other manufacturers have removed.
Sony phones are hands down the best android phones I’ve used. The UI has for a long time been mostly stock, with nice additional touches.
Plenty of options in the settings, and almost all have a good explanation of what they do without dumbing it down too much. Giving actually helpful information to the user instead of treating them like infants.
The fact that they’ve stuck to offering 3.5mm jacks and SD slots is great, they stuck to dedicated camera shutter buttons for ages too (even with a two stage focus function when you pressed lightly). No notches. Two front facing speakers.
They’re also very dev friendly, going as far as publishing bootable AOSP builds on their GitHub.
I like how, despite them being a small player, they their code contributions to AOSP is beaten by only Google themselves. Many of the sleep/battery optimisations we’ve seen over the years were actually a Sony contribution.
There’s a lot to like about Xperias. That said, there’s also some stuff that pisses me off.
The naming is dreadful. What comes after the Xperia 1? Why the Xperia 1 II of course! I swear only their console division is capable of clear and sensible naming.
They often announce a new phone then don’t release it for another 2 months
They’ve fallen seriously behind in software support. This will be mitigated by EU legislation forcing longer support, but it’ll still be behind Samsung/Google.
They overcharge for their phones, get blasted in reviews for it, then drop prices a couple of months later, but by then the perception of the phones costing too much has already taken root - stupid!
The naming is dreadful. What comes after the Xperia 1? Why the Xperia 1 II of course! I swear only their console division is capable of clear and sensible naming.
Their phone division is run by their camera division and unfortunately the naming makes sense in that situation
They’ve fallen seriously behind in software support. This will be mitigated by EU legislation forcing longer support, but it’ll still be behind Samsung/Google.
I think only Samsung and Google are doing 7 years of updates. Plus fun fact Sony releases Asop builds of newer versions of android 3 years after eol. But for some reason they won’t extend updates for their gms roms https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/fb737914-22cf-4dfc-b367-9fa2258ac4ab.png
Used a Z1 for +7 years so fell in love with Sony phones and made me got a 1ii (I'd think naming them as 1.0, 1.1... could be a much better convention that this stupidity) when it finally had to say goodbye.
Those four 'cons' points are exactly the same points people complained about them 4 years ago.
They're absolutely great, I'd feel miserable with another phone brand - but It's unbelievable they have done absolutely nothing in this time to assess those points.
I had an Xperia XZ Premium once. Got fooled by their AOSP commitment only to later find out that their camera sensor comes with DRM and installing a ROM will result in severely degraded photo quality.
The name is supposed to be read as Xperia 1 Mark V etc. so it’s still not great and they should just have letters for there Lines instead of having two numbers back to back but it helps if you want to make sense of it.
Counterpoint: my eyes are not what they used to be 20 years ago and 6,5...7" screens hit the sweet spot for useability. Especially since bezels are super thin these days so a 6,7" phone today is barely larger in total dimensions than a 5,5" phone 6 or 7 years ago.
I used an iPod touch 4G thru 7G as my 'phone'. WiFi was available enough where I live that it was all I needed. And if I was off in the woods somewhere, I was ok not having service, and the intarwebs instantly answering my every curiosity. I tried to keep it small.
Unfortunately nowadays pretty much almost everything has some form of clickbait title or thumbnail. Even science or news videos (and I'm not talking about tabloids) ... One of the many reasons why I barely use YT anymore.
They can't even get their testing data right. There's no way in hell they could predict the loss of users from clickbait because they'd be already gone at that stage. So you would only measure with users that are susceptible to clickbait, which of course means they'd click more on clickbaited videos.
It's like EA suddenly doing a decent thing. It probably won't pay off for them in comparison, because all their good faith costumers have been shunning the company for probably decades at this point. And what's left are the customers who buy their shit anyway, regardless of how much they get milked or bullied through various marketing strategies.
There is at least the Unihertz Jellystar, which is a fairly nice tiny phone. Personally I’m likely stuck with Pixel phones because I’m a big fan of Graphene OS, otherwise I’d likely pick one up after my Pixel 4a fails, which might be awhile, since it’s still going strong.
Man that side-by-side of the scrolling lag was super obvious. That would drive me up the wall.
It’s such a shame that Google still can’t get their act together and offer as smooth and consistent an experience as their rivals because otherwise they do have a lot going for them
I tested a Pixel 8pro with GrapheneOS. The lag is awful for a device of such high price. Totally unacceptable. And it’s not GrapheneOS fault I believe.
Ah, shame - I’d heard mixed reports over whether Graphene manages to fix some of the performance issues of the stock ROM, but that’s one more data point in the Nope column.
I guess Tensor still has some fundamental issues that have yet to be ironed out.
It’s basically Exynos isn’t it? Dunno if it is the chip… battery was good though. Tested it as an internet only phone not for calls etc (no sim card). Also I need to clarify that the lag is not there in all apps but in quite few though. So it must be the architecture of apps and not the chip.
I’d say it’s more like a cousin/sibling of Exynos rather than being a straight rebrand. They share very similar clock management and power management architecture, although there are enough differences to set them apart.
It could well be that certain apps are optimized more towards Qualcomm’s Snapdragon architecture over Tensor, which would account for why the Nothing Phone appears to perform better in certain apps than Pixels do, or it could be that the SoC’s thermal management or clock profiling is leading to inefficiencies in performance.
Could be a little from column A and a little from column B, so to speak.
I ended up buying a Pixel Fold for the Fold aspect. There’s an added benefit that it’s really short when folded so I can reach the entire screen one handed. It’s heavier and thicker than a slate phone, but I actually enjoy the folded experience way better than other phones.
This is true, and honestly my biggest gripe with the phone. I don’t wear small mitts, and I can only comfortably reach 3/4 of the way up the phone. This is exacerbated by the fact that phone application design is in a very top-centric stage right now. I wonder if there’s a way I could extend the android nav bar to take up the top 1/4 of the screen…
On Samsung devices there is an accessibility setting that gives a smaller one-hand screen when swiping down from the bottom bar. But that just feels like a waste of space when you could just have a smaller screen.
Because it’s something you use a lot for small things throughout the day. When you need to quickly answer a message or look at a map you shouldn’t need to stop and place down everything you’re holding.
I don’t know, those things aren’t a problem for me. I can use maps and type one handed if I need to and I use my phone as much as the next guy. I just don’t find I really need to very often, very rarely in fact.
I know my way of doing things isn’t always standard, are there other reasons people have?
This is probably very subjective. I’d say I use my phone one-handed about 7/10 times and I’d do it more if I could. Actually I do most things one-handed when possible but I have small hands so phones are becoming an issue. There isn’t a specific reason, it’s just more convenient.
Yeah it is subjective but when I see complaints about big phones, or rather the lack of small ones, using it one handed seems to be a regular thing.
I’ve been thinking about this and I used both hands with all my phones back to the old Nokia feature phone days, and the first smart phone I had was less than 3.5 inches.
Despite my fairly large hands that have no problem shifting the phone around in one, I just don’t. And it’s because of accuracy, or lack of it. I can miss my intended target quite easily, even with two hands. The bigger the screen, the less accurate I have to be. That’s a really big thing for me. I even used the Nokias with bigger buttons.
This is starting to make sense! If I had smaller fingers that were also more accurate, I would probably want to use a phone one handed as well.
I think this has explained it for me and I’m glad I asked. Now I can appreciate the perspective of the complaint and that’s something I like, seeing things from a place different to my own.
I never thought flip phones to count as mini phones. Does people who want small phones actually buy them? I always thought people who want small phones do so because they prefer small screens that can be easily operated with one hand while still maintaining practicality. A flip phone’s external screen is too small to be practical as primary screen, and the main screen is even larger than most phones screen.
I think it’s more correct to say that non-flagship phones are cheaper. all modern spec small/compact phones in my recent memory have had a comparable price to their non-small counterparts ( e.g. Xperia compacts, Zenfone, whatever that small iPhone was called). the price of a device isn’t linearly proportional to its mass.
I haven’t owned a small phone in like 10 years, my last one was a Xperia Z3 Compact but I remember it being considerably cheaper than the flagship model, especially considering the hardware was inferior.
yeah, I liked the z3c so much, I must’ve gone through like 4 copies of them, until a newly purchased one had the screen let go within a month of me opening up the box. I’ve been chasing for a modern version of that phone ever since, and the razr+ is the closest I’ve come
flip phone owner here! I love my razr+/40 ultra. the small screen is entirely reachable by my thumb, and is plenty big enough to read emails, messages, etc. i even use it to play passtime games, like into the breach, or attach it to an 8bitdo zero with a 3d printed case to use as a Gameboy.
This phone seems to have the biggest external display compared to other flip phones. So it’s completely usable with just the external display? No issue with apps when used from the external display (other than being small)? Can you type and reply to messages and place calls from the external display?
yeah, you can use any app, and they work fine… with, as you might expect some warts due to apps not being designed for that screen size. a common issue is with apps that have ridiculous fixed headers and footers, leaving you a teeny tiny sliver of space for content. there’s an option to make the viewport slightly bigger, since the screen extends down and around the outer cameras, and that helps sometimes, but then obviously the cameras might prevent you from hitting some buttons on that footer. this is not a very common situation though, and maybe almost desirable? I can use the outer screen to do quick phone interactions and put it back in my pocket without being too sucked in. if I want to doom scroll/get otherwise immersed, I’ll open the fold. i like that this needs to be an intentional action.
you can respond to messages and type on the outer screen, yes, using any keyboard as long as it’s Gboard.
There’s two main reasons to want a smaller phone. A smaller overall physical size so it fits better in a pocket, or a smaller screen so it’s more reachable when used with one hand.
I suppose the new flip foldable phones might satisfy the first but not the second.
Some people, like myself, prefer small phones because they are easily pocketable. I don’t have any problems operating a larger screen but I don’t like carrying around a larger device all the time, especially since I’ve cut back on usage significantly and it spends a lot more time in my pocket. Flip phones are the modern solution to this problem.
I finally upgraded my phone after 7 years. I had trouble picking out a phone that didn’t remove everything… no headphone jack, no sd card slot and we’re supposed to call that an upgrade? (What I got still has those thankfully)
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