Sony Xperia XZ1 Factory Unlocked Phone - 5.2" Full HD HDR Display - 64GB - Moonlit Blue (U.S. Warranty)

With the XZ1, Sony's Xperia line returns to form. After wandering in the cel phone wilderness for the last year or so, the electronics giant pulled their collective heads out of their collective hindquarters and have delivered a very good (if not quite great) flagship mobile device.The past 12-16 months gave us the X, the X Compact, the X Performance, the XZ, the XZS, the XA1, and a gaggle of other mid-tier offerings from Sony. Of them, only the XZS and the XZ Premium could come close to laying claim to flagship status, with the latter coming with one of the finest 4K displays in the business. Unfortunately XZS didn't come with a battery big enough to power the nice phone specs, and the XZ Premium was an exceptionally large phone, at an exceptionally large price.The XZ1 sees the company step up it's game. As of this writing, it's one of the few devices shipping with Android 8 / Oreo out of the box, running the latest Snapdragon 835 processor, with a beautiful 1080 display and a slightly-refined physical design and sturdy-feeling build-quality. And for nearly $700, it certainly should have a premium feel to it.Even the best phones are balancing acts of compromise, so while there's certainly something here for everyone, it's also unlikely to appeal to absolutely everyone. Most people either love or hate Sony's take on industrial design. Some bemoan the size of the top and bottom bezels. In a world where the S8 strives to give customers nothing-but-screen, Sony certainly isn't following the fashion train. But they sure as heck are following the functional-device-train.Having owned an S8, I certainly see the appeal. It's a beautiful looking device. But at the end of the day, I found the lack of bezels to be a problem in day to day use. With no edge on which to rest fingertips, I was constantly accidentally activating various apps, or accidentally hitting the wrong onscreen area within a given app. Nice to look at...but darn if it's not a pain to actually use.So, here's a subjective run down of Pros and Cons:PRO- Great screen. In addition to it's Triluminous setting, Sony has added a new video color-saturating setting. Honestly, it looks like they're taking a stab at the popping colors and deep blacks on OLED devices like the S8. And they've done a good job...this is one of the sharpest, most color popping screens out there at the moment.- Great processor. The new Snapdragon is great. Everything runs smoothly.- Headphone jack / Audio processing. Yay for hanging on to this bit of tech, the old headphone jack. Bluetooth headphones are well and good, but they eat up a battery, and they can't deliver the same quality of audio as a wired set. If how your music sounds on your device is important to you, wired is still the way to go. For now at least. And Sony's DESS audio processing sounds pretty great to my ears. Pick up a third party audio player like Neutron if you'd like even more control of the sound.CON- Physical design. This really doesn't belong in the "con" column, but the fact is either you like what Sony is doing here, or you don't.- Price. Sony offers a handful of budget models, but their flagship line has never been anything but pricey. Especially in America where the brand isn't known for it's mobile devices, the average android user might be hard pressed to pay $699 to a company they normally associate with televisions. In Europe and Asia, though, Sony remains a popular contender with Samsung and Apple for high end devices.- Battery. This also might not be a negative, as the new Snapdragon and Oreo are alleged to be more efficient with their power use. Running some benchmarks seem to bear this out, as while it leads in most areas, there are some processes they've scaled back. So far, I don't see any penalty in processing power, but I've also not had it long enough to take a firm stance on battery life. But anecdotally, it does seem to be an improvement over the XZS and XZ Performance.

Product info : XPERIA XZ1 (moonlit blue) US warranty, unlocked modelG8342 : SI 1310-1104 (the product No. is the same as the international edition)Carrier and Plan : T-mobile T-mobile OneActivation month : Dec 2017Used locations : Texas, Curaçao (a Caribbean island)OS : OS 8 (Oreo) , still a bit buggy OS I probably need to wait for more patches....Design : Pretty awesome design, but very slippery. It is highly recommended to use a transparent case so that you can still enjoy thelook of the phone without dropping it.Functionality : smooth, but some programs are buggy.I switched from CDMA company to GSM company, T-mobile. There are more phones to choose. Therefore I chose this phone. I am happy to be liberated from any service carrier Logo on phones and during booting.Note: My XPERIA package box states G8342 which is the same as the international edition No. Therefore I called Amazon. The Amazon rep said the product I received is the US warranty edition. I have no problem using this product with T-mobile so far.

So before this I owned the Moto G4 (not a impressive phone and not impressed with what lenovo did to Motorola) and before that I owned a Motorola X Pure (my favorite android phone of all time) and seeing as how this was my first venture into a sony branded android phone I really wanted to love it... but I don't.What ruins this phone for me.Bezels-So to start with everyone talks about it but you don't realize it until you see it are the bezels, now I'm not looking for a bezelless display but this thing is ridiculous, there are 7 year old phones running symbian that have smaller sized bezels than this phone does. Photos and videos don't do it justice you have to get this thing in your hands and use it to understand how bad it is. It makes the device unnecessarily big, the screen feel smaller than it really is, and it makes the device looks cheap.Camera-On paper the camera should be great but in real world use it's just average at best. It doesn't perform particularly well in low light and no matter what the lighting conditions are pictures turn out blurry for some reason. I know it doesn't have optical image stabilization but neither do my other phones and I don't that issue with them. Bottom line the camera is good but it doesn't feel like it should be on a flagship phone at least not one in 2017.Sony apps-These things are annoying they constantly pop up with ads trying to get you to buy stuff you don't want and on top of that the stuff they sell is broken, for example the themes after a few days glitch out and don't display properly unless you reset your phone and on top of it you have to pay for them. The worst part is you can't disable or uninstall these, you might be able to disable notifications from them but they are always there. I paid $700 for a device only for it to show me ads? If I wanted that I would have brought a prime phone!Honestly I could keep going on like how the display is average, no fingerprint scanner, and the also mediocre battery life but I think you get the point by now. For $600 I would bump my rating up from 3 stars up to 4 but I didn't pay the $600 no I paid the $742 which is what this device cost when it came out just two months ago.The only real positives I can say about this device is the build quality is fantastic, the processor is top of the line, and the speakers are better than at least 95% of phones today. everything else is just bleh.