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!