[sethhochberg]

I used an Xperia Z3 Compact for a while before I bought an iPhone SE and loved it. Sony's walled-garden for Android was pretty nice, I'll probably be back as long as they continue making compact phones once my SE gets too slow/old/breaks/whatever. The SE was my first iPhone, and unfortunately seems like it might be my last.

[wlesieutre]

I also had a Z3 Compact before switching back to an SE. There was some stupid crap, off the top of my head I believe the camera's image processing was DRM locked and didn't work in any 3rd part camera apps. Low light noise reduction was the most obvious symptom.

This might have been fine if Sony's camera app wasn't a trainwreck compared to the 3rd party developers'. It also meant that image quality in other apps like Snapchat suffered. I was never 100% clear on whether the better camera algorithms were available to 3rd party devs if they bothered to implement them as a Sony specific feature, or if they were entirely locked to Sony's own camera app. In either case, 3rd party camera apps were bad.

Similarly, if you unlocked your bootloader you'd lose those image processing DRM keys and the camera turns into hot garbage.

> Sony has updated the text of the bootloader unlock warning on its website to be clear about the camera impact. It reads, "...the removal of DRM security keys may affect advanced camera functionality. For example, noise reduction algorithms might be removed, and performance when taking photos in low-light conditions might be affected."

https://www.androidpolice.com/2014/10/02/unlocking-the-bootl...

I don't know whether they're still doing this nonsense or not. Other than that it was a decent phone. They didn't mess with the OS too much. I don't hate Android as an OS, but it seems like whichever OEM you pick you're just deciding which particular flavor of bullshit you want.