Sony used to make compact variants of their flagship Xperia phones. Good specs. Good battery life. Good camera. Good display. Good sound. Good reception. Headphone jack. SD card slot. Unlockable bootloader, so they could be de-googled.
Sadly, the “compact” models grew slightly larger with each model year, and even a not-so-compact one hasn’t been released in a while.
The Z5 Compact absolutely destroyed that lineup unfortunately. That SD810 was just terrible and never should have been released. I had one and it was hot (literally, that mofo could hit high 40 degrees c on the surface!) garbage. After that they started going all weird - I believe the next compact was a mid-range SOC, then they did a few flagships, then they went midrange and went some strange curved shape, then they went to compact-in-name-only with their tall boi 5 series.
Changes in direction like this, going from consistently outstanding design and execution to weird choices and mediocre quality, make me wonder if leadership of the project was given to someone who had no idea what they were doing.
I know they were deliberately being hamstrung by the higher ups in terms of their cameras - they didn’t want their phones to have as good cameras as possible because they thought it would harm their dedicated camera sales. This basically destroyed their phone division to the point where it became irrelevant, as no matter how good the rest of the phone might be, the cameras were took dogshit pictures unless you used a tripod and spent 5 minutes changing settings for every single shot.
Sony used to make compact variants of their flagship Xperia phones. Good specs. Good battery life. Good camera. Good display. Good sound. Good reception. Headphone jack. SD card slot. Unlockable bootloader, so they could be de-googled.
Sadly, the “compact” models grew slightly larger with each model year, and even a not-so-compact one hasn’t been released in a while.
Yeah I have an xperia 5 iii. It’s not compact, it’s just narrow (seriously hate the ultra wide phone displays). Also heavy as a brick.
The Z5 Compact absolutely destroyed that lineup unfortunately. That SD810 was just terrible and never should have been released. I had one and it was hot (literally, that mofo could hit high 40 degrees c on the surface!) garbage. After that they started going all weird - I believe the next compact was a mid-range SOC, then they did a few flagships, then they went midrange and went some strange curved shape, then they went to compact-in-name-only with their tall boi 5 series.
Changes in direction like this, going from consistently outstanding design and execution to weird choices and mediocre quality, make me wonder if leadership of the project was given to someone who had no idea what they were doing.
Or to someone who wanted to sabotage it.
What a pity.
I know they were deliberately being hamstrung by the higher ups in terms of their cameras - they didn’t want their phones to have as good cameras as possible because they thought it would harm their dedicated camera sales. This basically destroyed their phone division to the point where it became irrelevant, as no matter how good the rest of the phone might be, the cameras were took dogshit pictures unless you used a tripod and spent 5 minutes changing settings for every single shot.