Sony phones are pretty great for stuff like this tbh
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MicroSD
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dual SIM
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headphone jacks (this is despite Sony being one of the biggest names in Bluetooth audio and therefore more likely to benefit from getting rid of 3.5mm)
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they stuck to notification LEDs longer than anybody (sadly stopped on their newest gen IIRC?
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dedicated 2-stage camera shutter buttons
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no notch, no hole punch
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stereo, front-facing speakers
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first to embrace water resistance on smartphones
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an OS that doesn’t treat you like a complete baby. It shows some relatively advanced options in the settings app and actually explains what they mean and why you’d want to use them. I appreciate that.
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shockingly FOSS friendly, even going as far as providing bootable AOSP builds on their GitHub, as well as contributing more to AOSP code than anybody other than Google themselves, despite being a niche OEM. A lot of the battery optimisations in Android are actually a Sony contribution, for example.
There’s a few things that suck. They need to extend their software support, their naming is dreadful (yes I know it follows the camera division naming, it’s still dumb), and they try to charge Apple/Samsung prices despite not being in the same dominant market position. But overall their Xperia division actually puts out some good stuff IMO.
Can you recommend any specific model of Sony phone? I’m thinking it’ll be my next one. I have an older Sony Vaio that I loved, and it ran Linux like a charm. Need a new phone and will only buy one with a microSD slot so…
Depends how high end you want to go tbh. Of their current lineup I only have experience with the Xperia 5 series, and it was great. I believe the current gen is the Xperia 5 V (still the dumbest naming scheme I’ve ever heard…)
I’m not really treating it as a proper recommendation, though, because I’ve not seen any reviews or anything. This is based on a slightly older model I had as a work phone.
(this is despite Sony being one of the biggest names in Bluetooth audio and therefore more likely to benefit from getting rid of 3.5mm)
What’s fun about that is the bluetooth sucks in many experia phones. So if someone wanted to use a bluetooth device they’d be better off just getting a new phone. My friend has fun with his Tesla where his wife has to turn bluetooth off on her phone before they get in otherwise the car will only connect to her phone and not load his profile/get angry if she gets out.
Bluetooth sucks with everything else, and is unusable according to him. It’s definitely the phone’s fault not the car.
