Sony Xperia 5 IV 128GB Factory Unlocked Smartphone [U.S. Official w/Warranty], Black

It's a small, skinny, light, one handed phone. It's so light that it feels cheaper than it is, given the glass and aluminum body.The back is a smooth, frosted glass similar to the new Samsung s23.Because of it's size it feels better with a case on it, so you're not gonna break it without a case. The size is optimized for one handed use better than any other phone.Expanded storage beats the Pixel or s23 I bought at the same time to see which I liked better. You can have 2tb for all the 4k video you want.It has the best screen in it's class with X1 Sony tv tech. But, because it's narrower than most phones the apps are smaller on the home screen, which annoyed me. S23 has better proportions for me. 120hz display is very fast. If you have a Sony tv like I do, you'll know what I mean.Has 2 front facing, really loud speakers, so you can hold it on its side without covering the bottom speaker like every other phone. All phones should have front speakers. Compared to the Pixel 7 I compared it with, it's just better in every way. Speakers on s23 are comparable, but again the bottom firing speaker is annoying when holding them phone horizontally.Having such a small phone with a 500 milliamp battery means going to bed with 50% charge after all day use. You'll never need a charge before bed. The battery gets better after a week as the battery program adjusts to your habits.To get better battery life you have to buy the s23 ultra or iphone 14 pro -both hundreds more money.Camera. The Pixel 7 is supposed to have the best camera, but I couldn't tell a difference with most use cases. I don't take a lot of pics, tho. But, I compared them taking the same pics at the same time in different lighting, and they were the same to my eyes.The difference comes down to the Pixel doing more things automatically to different effects, while the Xperia allows you to manually control exactly what the photo looks like. But, for a typical guy, it's a wash for me.3.5mm ear phone jack. This was big for me, as I'm an audiophile with expensive wired headphones, IEMs. But, unlike the LG phones the phone jack on the Xperia isn't special. It's much better than Bluetooth, but I still use my LG as a portable music player.It's main benefit is streaming and editing video, which I don't do.For gamers and streamers, the Xperia is made for you. It's optimized for those activities. I've only tried the video game features which are nice like the ability to route power directly from a plug to not heat up the battery.But, if you're a heavy gamer it's probably too small for you.So, the main difference I noticed between the Sony and Pixel was that Sony focused on hardware, and Google on software. The Google does more, but it does it badly.The Sony is closer to stock Android (minus pixel only features), but does everything well.Example: the Pixel has a feature where you can just say "stop" to stop an alarm, but the microphone is so cheap you have to pick it up an say stop loudly close to the phone, making it a pointless feature.Pixel also has a call screening feature that's literally just the phone transcribing what the robot menu system is saying in real time. The only difference is you can see what it's saying, as well as hear it. Great for deaf people, pointless gimmick for everyone else.Every new "pixel only" feature is like that, a gimmick, while the needed day to day stuff sucks more. It's a cheaper phone and it shows.As for the new s23, it matches the quality of the Xperia as it should. But given the speakers, expandable storage, ear jack, and battery life I prefer the Xperia. I just wish it was a little wider like the s23 which I think is a better size.

The Sony Xperia 5 IV is an utter disappointment and a shameful product. Sony engineers, coders, designers, and executives should take this review to heart. This phone is a disaster of poor coding and a horrible execution of a noble vision. As of right now, this phone stands as the last flagship with both expandable storage and a headphone jack, and it should stand tall with pride, but instead it falls on its face immediately as the first units are delivered.This phone cannot "phone" properly. It cannot play music while typing a text message. It cannot open a picture message while in a phone call. It is incapable of handling Android Auto. All of these are things that a 2022 flagship Android is more than capable of, especially with the flagship chipset. If you buy this phone and expect to have a halfway decent experience, return it because it will not grant you that. This is my second Xperia 5 IV due to these issues, and nothing has changed. It is already on Android 13 (64.1.A.0.857), the latest for the USA region, and there has been no change since launch. Some say it's RAM management killing background applications, but regardless, it's a problem that is impossible to fix on the customer side. I can't trust this phone with anything, not with my life using Android Auto, not with my apps and files knowing that if the OS decides to terminate them, I'll lose everything. Even something as simple as typing gets impeded by this, when typing a text message and listening to music, the OS will force close both the music player AND Gboard while the user is typing. This causes a half second of no on-screen keyboard. I've often returned to apps expecting my last action to have been saved or processed, only to find that the phone decided it wasn't important enough and lost time and energy.Do not expect to use this phone for anything other than answering phone calls, and even then it is incapable of doing that right. I've often been told that I cannot be heard, on both of the Xperia 5 IVs, changing hands, position, and speaker phone. This phone is not capable of VoWiFi calling (WiFi calling) with T-MOBILE USA. It has frequent loss of 5G connectivity, likely from the OS force closing the part of the operating system that handles that, or some other issue to add to the list. When the user gets notifications, you'll often see two notification trays, overlapped on top of each other like a word document that has gone awry. The cameras overheat scarily fast, irrationally fast, so fast that every attempt I've had to play with them has become a waste of time. Every time the phone decides to kill background apps, it has visible stuttering and pauses while using the camera.I can't see how anyone at Sony is proud of this phone, and I feel bad for the Sony representatives who are forced to deal with angry customers this holiday season. It's like not a single person turned on the phone and used it for longer than a minute. I do not believe any of the engineers who worked on this phone actually used it. It's a shameful device and it puts Sony and Xperia further into the ground.If you want a phone that looks pretty but accomplishes nothing at all, the Xperia 5 IV is the phone for you.