[Sony Xperia XZ Premium Guides, News, & Discussion] najoor:
I personally find the "expert" reviews useless, almost to the point of being insulting to the reader's intelligence. They all blabber about mega pixels and giga bytes and datasheet comparison with other phones without realizing that's almost no one buys a phone because it has 20% more mega pixels. People buy phones because they want to have a good user experience regardless of what's under the hood (although sometimes there is a correlation). Most folks don't give a $*** if the 4k display is down sampled to 1080 on a 5.5 inch display when 90% of the people cannot even discern the difference unless they look very closely. But every expert review has to proudly mention it as if they have made the biggest discovery! So I agree with what was stated earlier in this thread: forget about the experts' opinions and just tread three users' reviews.

As a long time user of sony phones I buy them because of their excellent build quality which you can only find in iPhones. They never feel cheap in your hands. Having said that, I have a few problems with Sony which make me think twice every time I'm about to buy an xperia:

1- Lack of compatibility with the US carriers. The fact that a phone is GSM unlocked and covers US LTE bands is so 2012. Sony phones don"t consistently offer HD voice, Wi-Fi calling, VoLTE, RCS texting, ... when used on US carriers like T mobile.

2- Speaking of which, unless Sony is intentionally trying to lose the U.S. market, I don't understand why they don't sort out the legal obstacles to included the finger print scanner in the U.S. version.

3- Years ago, Sony's android implementation always had a few things particular to Sony which you could find nowhere else, such as the stamina mode, x-reality, etc. Some of these features have not been updated in ages and some have become awkwardly redundant like the stamina mode. The result is that Sony's android has started to feel bland and AOSP-like.

4- One of my biggest complains: the front and back glasses always get (micro) scratched and you need a glass protector if you're sensitive to this. Samsung figured this out years ago so beginning with Note 3 I didn't see a need to have a screen protector on my Samsung phones.

5- Since sony closed their stores in the us their after sales customer service has become awful. For example they only repair your phone if it is under warranty. Even if you're willing to pay them they don't fix your phone after the warranty period. This is a problem because some repairs such as changing the battery while keeping the phone waterproof can only be done by Sony.

6- Sony makes excellent camera hardware and everyone from Apple to Samsung uses them. But somehow they always get the software wrong and the result is pictures with much lower quality than the hardware is capable of. Take the XA ultra whose whole selling point is the 16 MP front facing Canberra and flash. The pictures taken with that camera in auto mode are comparable to a 5MP front camera with no flash and heavy softening filtering. For all the brouhaha surrounding the XZ premium camera, I have a feeling that it won't perform any better than my Samsung s8+ in low light fast motion photography.