I owned this phone for almost three years now. This phone is good as a back up camera for casual travels if you don't want to bring heavy equipment. I like the camera control UI. However, I will not buy another Sony phone. Here are some things that turn me off: You only get two years of software update for an $1,800 phone. I'm stuck on Android 13. The fingerprint function starts to fail. It randomly fails to read fingers. Restart will fix it, but the problem will keep coming back every day. After many calls, Sony support asked me to send it back for repair. It's going to be expensive, so I'll live with it. This phone does not have much computational image processing. If you want to do night photography, you need a tripod. I'd rather use a full frame camera if I carry a tripod. The one-inch sensor advertised did not impress me. I don't really see the advantage compared to the other phones which usually get much better image quality under harsh lightings, due to their better computational processing.
Sure, the trick is in not using noise reduction and cleaning the sound manually. It takes a very long time, but it would sound much better. Noise reduction tends to muffle the sound and makes it a bit unnatural.
Nice review. I wanted to buy it. But Sony narrowed their market in my country now and I think its hardware should be updated. It is almost 3 years old now. In my opinion, one these two should be: Either release a new model (Pro II) or not change the model but release sub-models ie: change nothing; design, camera all be same. But update chipset, memory and of course Android version. Even if it would have updated Android version, I will still think "Would its chipset be enough?"
