To me, I don't see what I'm missing going up from the 4a to a high end Samsung at twice the cost. Maybe a 90Hz display and a slightly faster CPU/GPU, which seem very marginal.
I think if Google doubles down on its mid range strategy (again) it's on to a winner.
Fwiw I feel similar about the iPhone SE, especially if apple refresh it at some point without a home button and better res OLED screen. Feels we are reaching the end of the S curve on smartphones.
Pixel 4a and 5 were very disappointing to me. I could accept the mid-range hardware, but the lack of a camera update and especially better zoom camera options made me abandon them.
Their branding is terrible though. Their naming scheme is without any pattern, making it hard to tell which phones are their budget/flagship/new/old models, and so on. And they're hard to even get at all in Canada.
I've only ever owned 2 smartphones in my life: Samsung Note2 and my current Sony Xperia XZ. Until now I've never experienced the touch screen go broke after an Software update, and that the temperature limit of the camera set so weird that 10min continuous usage leads to a warning popup (that can be removed without hardware damange, if you root the phone).
Their lack of customer support is also not doing it any favour for getting respect.
I guess that I will have to give Google phone or Huawei a try, for my next phone. (once tried xiaomi, didn't like them)
And it confirms the GP's thesis that Sony is committed to keep making excellent phones while redoubling its efforts to ensure they're ignored.
What the article really says is that Sony is going to stop marketing and selling their phones in many regions, which means if you want one you might have to order it online from a reseller in Hong Kong or something. And then it may or may not be compatible with your local wireless spectrum. If it is, you'll have an excellent phone, and if it's not, you'll have an expensive pocket camera.
Probably what they've found is that outside of Japan, they can't compete against Apple's and Google-Pixel's mindshare (despite having far superior hardware than the latter, in my opinion).
> Xperia is by no means dead to the world and the company is actually redoubling its efforts with that brand in a bid to grow amid the spending cuts in regions where it will now be appointing its focus. The Sony Xperia 1 marked the start of that and is actually the result of those cost-cutting measures.
As someone else pointed out, the real problem with the Android ecosystem isn't so much the hardware imo it is the absolutely appalling software everyone but Google seems to ship (I definitely include Samsung in this). Microsoft could do a good job of this and has the $$$ to throw at marketing (plus could leverage the cloud streaming Xbox stuff).
[0]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-duo?...
The original quip was an application of Conway's law, in that if you have a rigid, hierarchical organization with lots of bureaucracy, you're probably not going to get great software out the other side.
At least for consumer devices. You might make exemplary software for other rigid, hierarchical enterprises.
It's nothing against Koreans. It's everything against how Korea has organized its corporate culture, even if it's making efforts to change that.
[0] https://www.phonearena.com/news/Samsung-One-UI-3.0-android-1...
As an android user, this saddens me.