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Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact

The last representative of the genre of compact but high-end Android smartphones.

The device thanks to which there are so many photos on this website.

Sony in 2017 released the first two smartphones on the market with Android 8.0 Oreo - the Xperia XZ1 and XZ1 Compact. Both are virtually no different except for the casing, display and, of course, the size of the battery. Very successful and fondly remembered by users.
Unfortunately, it's a bit sad to see Sony's system update cycle, as this manufacturer offers a maximum of two years of support. Even in 2019, this was simply ridiculous. Especially since these models were marked as Android Enterprise Recommended, which means, among other things, they should receive security updates for three years. However, this was not the case, and exactly two years after the release of the XZ1/XZ1C, they are stuck on Android 9.0 Pie with the September 2019 patches.

The Xperia XZ1 Compact is a very comfortable smartphone made of pleasant-to-the-touch materials (matte, good-quality plastic on the back and sides, and thick aluminum strips on the top and bottom of the device). However, it should be acknowledged that due to its angularity it is prone to dig into the hand.
In terms of performance, it's hard to complain about the device's speed, especially with the Android 8.0 Oreo version, where all tasks and apps launch and perform in a jiffy.

The successor (XZ2 Compact) Compared to its predecessor, it was much heavier, thicker, larger, while losing the headphone jack, and the display itself was not praised because of manufacturing defects. Quo vadis, Sony?
The Xperia Compact series were almost always* treated by the manufacturer as proof that compact devices can be no different from the most serious models on the market in terms of performance or build quality. This was a very different approach than with, for example, Samsung's Galaxy S III mini or the S5 mini. The idea of a small but powerful smartphone was also tried by Apple with the 12 mini and 13 mini models, although these, unfortunately, did not meet the sales expectations of the company with a bitten apple in the logo, and now there are no such devices on the market at all. And no, the Galaxy S22, Zenfone 9, etc. are not small phones.
*The exception was the 2016 X Compact, which had a lower-end Snapdragon chip than other manufacturers' flagships, although the same as the larger Xperia X.

This unit is one of the last Xperia XZ1 Compacts produced at all. It was manufactured in October/November 2018 and I bought it brand new from a batch of a dozen remaining units from Sony's official online store in late February 2019. A week later, all of them (black and silver) were sold out.
A reliable smartphone that still remains in service as my main phone since purchase, and thanks to LineageOS by Flamefire, it has a system newer than the last release from Sony and still receives monthly security updates.
The 32 GB of internal memory may seem like a rather small amount, but with microSD cards (up to 256 GB) this problem can be remedied. I have no intention of replacing it, as there simply isn't a worthy successor on the market that doesn't require some compromise.

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