[Sony Xperia XZ1  Guides, News, & Discussion] Techamazon:
[MENTION=4133204]lilbrat[/MENTION] I'm not on to something, I'm just pointing put the obvious. Why do you think the biggest carriers in the US have locked (bootloader wise) down phones? It's about being as anti-consumer as possible for the biggest benefit of the company. And many indoctrinated cretins even bow down to this idea as being wonderful and swear by it (see Apple and them patenting magnetic plugs that were used for rice cookers long before).

As for swedes and their mentality goes. because the OTA never came, it might never come now for the device in certain parts of the world. It's just how a swede (and some others with a similar nonexistent modern ideology) works, instead of being shamed upon they would rather just you forget about it until they fall into obscurity. Japan have similar issues, and them following a trend they don't really get isn't gonna help in the long run, and having their mobile division cut down ever since the split of SE isn't even gonna help either (and don't even let me get started what was happening at Ericsson at the time).

Back in the <Z5 era you were still paying for decent hardware even if it was somewhat overpriced but it only went up from there and the old formula never changed since the beginning of the Z series as you might've noticed. While at least providing a near AOSP experience was nice, sure for many it indeed is. As time went on they just kept adding bloat instead of refining. And not just Sony but a lot of OEMs which is why they could never really catch up as they could only rely on trends in the end. just look at how HTC and LG went as an example. What Samsung did with S-S7 -> S8+ shows what every other OEM should've done. But sadly in most cases it goes the opposite (removing the headphone jack, except this was mostly done so you could sell other OEM made peripherals).

Now Samsung is probably doing the opposite as mentioned which is either due to stupidity or stagnation (most likely both). As the S9 was just a S8+ to many, kinda like what the many thought the Wii U was to the Wii..

The slab of glass on the back of the XZ2/3 that added extra thickness and weight for no reason is probably the biggest dumbest decision after the headphone jack removal they could've done (I'm not gonna go into the DAC territory which began far sooner), meanwhile the XZ1 seems to have been some dumb prototype they never really go into but decided to push out either way.

If I had to guess then the extra that goes into every phone since they decided to start selling ads (facebook, spotify, microsoft, hotels whatever and the AVG BS) probably bump up the price by about 10-20%, even more for the more expensive ones just to make a decent profit per unit sold most likely never went that good. Selling ads means time more time invested, even if you're still shipping old apks, and goes for everything else they have to offer. They could have a unified package for the camera if they weren't that greedy and ignorant (lack of focus) as most of the camera features lies in the hardware so they could just use flags on a per-device basis as turning em on (not like getting 4K capturing working but other stuff) won't do anything as whatever the flag is trying to call doesn't exist. And this goes for any other OEM that decides to use sony sensors or vice versa.