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 their Lines instead of having two numbers back to back but it helps if you want to make sense of it.
Once again I look at Sundar Pichai and ask, what is the point of you? Under his stewardship, Android has lost all signs of life. The Android community is dead. There's been no innovation and the little bits of innovation they had created in recent years were quickly sunset. The last selling point of a Pixel was the quick updates and long update life but now everyone offers seven years. No identity, no community, no selling point, just blandness! They don't even leverage their money to offer cheaper hardware, the Pixel Tablet with Dock is compelling in its form factor, but upon closer look, it's less than mid-range specs, sub-par speaker performance and all with an over inflated price. At least eat the cost so that you can get one or two of these in every home. The only thing that's impressed me in recent years is bundling the watches.
i don't think they like the android community much since a lot of the community is dedicated toward getting away from the surveillance and theft that Google profits from.
Well if they would think more than 1 financial quarter ahead of things, they'd realize that they will lose customers to competition, thereby ruining both device sales and data gathering profits.
What shocks me, and I do mean shocks me, is what this line of thinking implies. Is the data google (tries to) gather from me really worth more $ than, say, an average of 350$ each year? Cause thats just 1 phone every 2-3 years and I'm looking into a tablet, and wearables eventually. I refuse to believe any knowledge about me is unique and valuable enough to beat that, and it seriously confuses me.
You talk about android then bring up random points about the pixel phones. Those are two separate things. One could say android is doing well because multiple manufacturers have adopted the 7 year policy that google initially put forward. I mainly use iOS so not an android fanboy, but your rant isn’t really making a coherent point.
I agree, from a user point of view, however from Google's point of view guys only job is to make money for the company, which he seems to be doing.
Android has been left to languish and especially the mid range and budget segment. Google had let OEM's use the largest sales market to keep selling junk low spec phones year after year with the same specs and no meaningful improvements. If you wanna really great cameras or wireless charging, your only choice is to buy a premium device. That locks out billions of people from having a great Android experience.
Even the premium segment hasn't seen that much improvement from Google. It's basically only Samsung who are pushing things forward through OneUI and through hardware Innovations like folding phones and zoom cameras to make the experience better.
I for one am tired of it and have decided that my next phone is an iPhone. For the same price as an A55 I can get a brand new iPhone 12 or for less I can get a refurbished model and have far superior cameras than any Android below €750 as well as years of OS updates and enjoy all the great user features Apple has added to iOS recently.
The last iPhone I had was the 7 and it was ok but my S7 Edge was better. I've been on Android since then but now iPhone has finally made some great improvements in both hardware and software which I think should offer me a better experience than budget Android.
They're not concerned with product, they're concerned with profit. They're strategically cutting away bits and pieces that don't make money. Incidentally, these are all the fun and exciting bits, leaving behind the blandness.
That's a boring answer but it is sadly true for Google and every other big tech company currently. They focused on massive growth for years off the back of heavy investment but now that the financial climate is bad and interest rates are up, all these companies suddenly need to refocus the business around profitability. It's why this wave of enshittification has hit the internet within the last few years.
Despite Sundar's leadership, do you think that extending update support to 7 years took no innovation? The Android team has been doing major system reworks to make this practical. The Tensor team has been working to do the same on the hardware side. Samsung is likely reusing firmware and software from that work given that the hardware is shares a lot of Samsung IPs. Prior to these developments Samsung was not interested in providing anywhere close to this length of support.
Android is in the best place it's ever been since its release. It's on more things than ever and we have the kind of update support we used to only dream about in 2008. And we have devices with unlockable and rekockable bootloaders. 🤯
Samsung committed to seven years before Google and look at the length of support Apple were offering. Maybe we have different definitions of innovation.
They didn't, Google are the first to do three years of OS updates and security patches with the Pixel 2 and extended that to the first gen Pixel. Samsung were doing two OS updates until they promised they would do 3 OS updates at the Note20 launch and extended it to the S10 and other models. You are correct that they upgraded that to four with the S21 before Google made the jump from 3 to 7.
More AI in places where a standard algorithm would prove more useful. Look at how effective iPhone locking is compared to android. I switch Roms on my android and often don’t even get the prompt to prove my ownership after resetting the phone.
There's a funny vid by DerBauer exposing the completely useless AI branding at Computex. There were PC cases with AI branding. Their explanation was something along the lines of 'you can put a PC in here that runs AI processing".
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha, no, seriously, battery management is now AI, and it's not just a rebrand of the same power management scheme we've had for years, honest. hahahahahahahahahahaha
The video’s not that long and the thumbnail is fine, dude. The content is clear and uses Jesse Lyu’s own words, his own voice even, to spotlight how stupid this whole thing is.
You mad your Rabbit purchase turned out to be shit or something? What’s your angle here?
17min really isn’t that much time and not every minute needs to be fully optimized. I mean, you found the time to bitch about a YouTuber not making an article which is far less time but infinitely more worthless.
And yes, I do I hope I find a job soon. It’s rough out there.
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If you really want someone to make it easy for you, basically Lyu has made some absolutely bonkers promises under the old company name from making a carbon negative crypto-currency attached to real-world solar grids using NFTs as a sort of stock option all the way to promising that they’d invent an AI powered digital universe that would be so advanced that it would basically mirror real life. He said all that and declared not only a roughly two year timeline but also that ten years wouldn’t be necessary.
And yet now he and his company can’t even produce this Rabbit thing in a way that can even barely function. Once again, tech bros are showing just how much “idea people” are kinda worthless when they have zero concept of how to execute literally anything with any depth. Venture Capitalists are also once again proving how stupid they are for believing this crap again.
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I’m not sure why the length of the video is upsetting you so much. I hope you find more time in your life for suboptimal things. Maybe you should by a vibrator and experience some pleasure.
Hear that everyone? If you listen or watch something 17 minutes long, that means you are unemployed. Ever watch a TV show or a movie? You are now instantly unemployed, congratulations.
I mean, this is just a flat out lie. Unless all of the media put out by the company is part of two medium posts? Was his correspondence with the CEO and company part of the medium posts? Don't worry, your NFTs will be worth something any minute now.
256 GB option, weirdly for the obsidian color only. Aloe and bay are nicer! (Also annoying how Google phones don't have microSD card slots because they offer Google Drive. smh this company)
Will get Gemini Nano for on-device AI
7 years of OS updates
Rest is pretty much the same.
Google Store, Amazon and Best Buy are offering a $100 gift card for pre-ordering. Best Buy and Google Store are accepting trade-ins - you'll have to compare to see which one is offering the most value for your phone. Best Buy gift card will be more useful than a Google Store gift card though.
If you can wait half a year or so, it should drop to about $375 like the previous A phones have, making it a solid bang for your buck.
MKBHD says to get the 8 over the 8a but I disagree. The improvements are marginal. Unless you really need wireless power sharing, the 8a offers pretty much everything the 8 does if slightly slower.
Best Buy gift card + trade-in or waiting till a price drop make it more enticing than paying $500 for the Pixel 8.
I'm plenty happy with my 6a so I'm going to hold onto it.
I hope they can find their footing again, I've always liked Sonys phone designs. I still miss my old Xperia Z, one of the early phones to the waterproofing game iirc. Certainly my first waterproof phone, loved taking it into the shower lmao. Then T-Mobile stopped carrying Sony phones :(
Honestly though lol, taking your phone into the shower has to be a new level from my perspective. I bring it almost everywhere in my pocket, even on the toilet as most do. But I've never felt the need to bring it into the shower. Am I the odd one? I feel like there's gotta be a limit to my addiction... 10 minutes while I'm cleaning myself should be a good break lol.
Google is too big and needs to be broken up. We have entire areas like watches and cars where stuff is just laughably ancient or poorly designed. To my knowledge, android auto doesn't even dynamically scale by screen size, it depends on google and the car maker working together to determine the right size. Cannot control features like AC or heating either.
When you get these mega corps like facebook, google, airlines, train companies, or food/drink companies, they buy up all the competition and then run them into the ground. We are down to like....two very stagnant smartphone OSs now, too.
You have to have regulations against this stuff, or greed takes over until the goverment mandates that stuff like insulin and inhalers are capped at $35/mo so these cunts don't charge $400 for lifesaving medicine.
Same goes for the housing and rental market. Break up these large companies that buy up all the housing and apartments and slap algorithmic rent and purchasing options on them.
They've done it in the past but that was before the legalization of bribery from corporations. Doubt it will happen now. Instead, they prop up and support these companies even if they're failing.
Add to that its not even the current android version on it. This company does not sound like they will give you updates so a bad availability of custom ROMs is really limiting.
What's funny to me is that you could say Apple is the reason for this.
Apple's had longer OS support for their phones than any Android manufacturer for a while, but then Google started catching up when they got their own chips and now Samsung and the others are pushing Qualcomm to quit their bullshit.
I do use an iPhone myself currently, but if Qualcomm opens their shit up enough that OEMs can provide at LEAST 5 years of software updates to their flagships, I might go back to Androidland (though I'm not sure what to even consider, I dislike Samsung and OnePlus disappointed me so hard with the OxygenOS->ColorOS switch that it's literally the reason I went to iOS.
I suppose any Android phone would be good if I ran a custom ROM like I used to, but a couple of years ago bank apps in my country started checking the integrity of the bootloader and whatever. I couldn't find any way around it back then, but maybe there's something now?
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