Pros
- Classic design, compact, lightweight, grippy, well-protected.
- Excellent OLED screen with immersive aspect, 120Hz, HDR10.
- Outstanding battery life.
- Superb speakers.
- The latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset.
- Great photo quality across all cameras, day and night.
- Dependable video quality, great sound, top-notch stabilization.
- No-nonsense launcher based on Android 13.
- Plenty of professional camera apps.
- 3.5mm jack, microSD expansion, physical camera shutter key.
Cons
- No charger and no cable in the box.
- No dynamic refresh rate for the screen.
- No telephoto camera, no macro capabilities.
- Throttles under heavy loads.
- 128GB storage is the only built-in storage option.
Add the update policy to the cons. 2 major versions and 3 years of security updates is just bad, especially for a device of this price range
Yeah this is one of my two problems with Sonys best phones even though I am the exact type of enthusiast they are after; the other being the often slow and confused launch that results in crap and delayed availability. There is zero chance I will ever buy a premium phone (and a grand is premium for me) unless I can trust it has multiple years of updates. Samsung does stuff wrong all the time but at least I know they will support their premium phones for the advertised price.
Cons
- No charger and no cable in the box.
That’s a Pros in my point of view ! Because we already have a lot of charger/cable in are house usually.
Yea people should stop complaining about this. Cables that come with phones are always crappy anyway, and I prefer chargers that have multiple outputs.
It’s bizarre how reviewers very quickly gave up on complaining that (other) phones don’t have headphone jacks or expandable storage, but keep hanging on the no charger thing.
It’s like complaining the phone doesn’t come with a SIM or electricity. Some stuff you just provide yourself.
I think it’s just the culmination of removing things from phones and increasing prices. We keep paying exorbitant prices and they keep cheaping out. Smartphones used to be one device for everything and now they are glorified cameras with internet where you need a heat gun to replace a freaking camera. So to me it feels insulting that they would remove a charger.
And all of that sucks, except not including a charger.
It’s complaining about the one thing that actually makes sense, and letting everything else slide.
Pack-in chargers and cables always suck. I don’t get how people use them, especially those cheap rubber 1m long cables. Utterly useless.
And chargers with one port? Who shells out 1 grand for a phone and has just one device? You can get an excellent charger with 4 ports and support for all the stupid proprietary protocols for like 30 bucks. Why would I use a pack-in one?
Complain about lack of replaceable batteries, headphone jacks, expandable storage, complain about Google’s monopoly and data harvesting in phones, not that they don’t give you some useless extra crap.
We need to force them to improve on that front then not excuse them for cutting costs.
Pack-in chargers and cables always suck. I don’t get how people use them, especially those cheap rubber 1m long cables. Utterly useless.
Any decent company will give you a high-spec charger and a decent cable with your fucking $1000+ phone.
Deciding to ditch the charger is only to inflate their bottom line, especially if you look at what they then sell the charger for separately.
None ever does or has. Only boutique brands like Razer may give you a braided cable, but nobody ever gives you a cable longer than 1 metre, never mind a charger with more ports.
But let’s say they do. Let’s say they include a selection of 3 good cables, and a charger with 4 ports that supports all the competing protocols, and throw in wireless charger too. Well congrats, now every phone, tablet, watch, camera and speaker is 50 $€£ more expensive, comes in a box twice as large, and we’re back to the problem of having too many useless chargers that stay in boxes.
Btw I use magnetic cables anyway. So whatever they include cable-wise is useless waste for me.
I think your definition of decent charger&cable is just different from me then I guess.
I expect to get a charger that has the fast charging for the phone (not necessarily the top spec, but high enough) and a usable cable, let’s say a 0.5 to 1 meter, that can also do basic data transfer.
If I wanted a charger with 4 ports I’d buy it. If I wanted a braided cable I’d buy it. I don’t want either - but I want a charger that I know works fast enough with my phone, and it becomes my travel charger. Everything else I can manage.
This will be less of a problem as power delivery becomes the norm, but most people probably don’t have a decent PD charger several times over at home. Worst case you’ll have an extra charger where an old one dies, which seems to be common especially with some peoples’ cables.
Or, you know, alternatively do actually discount the phone by $60 or however much they act like it costs (it’s obviously way less than that, but chargers are still a significant expense largely because they need to have many different SKUs for different regions so the logistics are more complicated).
Well, agree to disagree I guess. I am never going to stop complaining that £850 phone can only work as a paperweight after 24 or so hours unless I already have some charger.
Why not just buy a bulletproof charger with multiple ports that will last a decade for all your devices, and good, 2m or longer, braided cables?
Or do you really only have one device and one charger for it, with no backups, nothing for travel?
Why the hell would they ditch the telephoto lens? It’s not the best of the three on my Xperia 5 II, but WTF are you doing Sony ?
Love the form factor, hell no on the price.
Agreed. Knock off ~$200 and it has my attention. That said, the audio jack and SD card slot are huge wins IMO.
Lol wut, it’s a boring rectangle of glass like every other crappy phone these days. Give me a Blackberry KeyTwo update anyday. That is a decent form factor!
Wasn’t the 5 series supposed to be mid range, and the 1 and 3 series be high-end?
Is one grand midrange today? Wtf.
The 5 series was never midrange. Its like the 1 series, but smaller.
The 5 ii was the same as the 1ii, just with a smaller size and no wireless charging.
Okay
All Sony phones are overpriced by about 20% when you compare them feature-wise. You pay for the unique combination of features and form factor.
