Most of their devices can run AOSP, and the various blobs are built for a crazy number of android and kernel versions.
Sadly, competitors like Xiaomi (IMHO, one among the worst manufacturers [1]), Nokia HMD Global, Huawei, Samsung, Apple and many others do not give many opportunities to Sony Mobile be profitable business. I wish they will improve marketing and sales channel.
[1] Annoying telemetry that you cannot opt-out and does not care if your Internet uses mobile data or Wi-Fi. Ridiculous permission requirements for apps, i.e. Weather requires permission to make a phone call (https://en.miui.com/thread-1851703-1-1.html) and Calendar to send SMS messages.
This seems to be most OSes, sadly :(
The thing about their Android One offering is that they don't bring their A game hardware-wise, they don't really advertise them, and it's confusing to find them in their other phones.
The XBox pays royalties for it's blu-ray drive - and a significant sum goes to Sony who it part of the Blu-Ray consortium, go figure!
https://www.engadget.com/2013/11/14/sony-playstation-4-revie...
There are also launch contemporary reviews of the movie playback experience on the PS4:
There was really no period of time where it couldn’t play movies. OP is misremembering facts to fit a conclusion they they’re reasoning backwards from.
Actually on AOSP (the version Sony releases), they all support both of those things.
In the US they were fucking garbage. I went through 3 replacements with a Xperia Z5 some years back that kept burning through the screen.
My Z3 had the glass on the back crack, and no repair shop could adequately glue the thing back onto the phone. So I converted it to stationary use. It eventually died after I used it as a AP wedged into a window, and water got inside.
Sony has one incompetent repair center in the US. Turnaround time averaged around 40 days, a time in which we'd need to contact Sony to keep moving the process forward. This was my experience with the Z series right on back to my old featurephone K-series in the mid-2000's
Good riddens, I won't miss them.
I've been lucky (for someone that buys phone direct) that I usually have a backup and a backup for the backup. Many don't have that luxury. I remember I had a Xperia Neo V cook the 3G portion of the radio and get denied for replacement under warranty (corrosion). All this leaves a terrible taste in my mouth.
To contrast, my Phillips 43" monitor had the screen go (backlight mura), it's a comparable $600 device. Know what they do? Advance replacement, I had a new panel in 2 days and could ship back the defective. Sony could do this, but they don't. Since they lack local repair centers you're just left without a working device.
Years back I had a friend with a 40gb ipod photo. It kept failing on him, Apple would replace. Eventually on the 3rd time they upgraded him to a 60gb ipod video, at no cost. He never experienced another failure. To date, he is still an Apple customer, still upgrades to their new devices every couple years. Sony doesn't even try in the US.
Out of ones I owned with the best aesthetics... the Nokia N9. No other phone matched OS to hardware as well. Mine died, else I'd probably still use it as a desk clock. It inspired the design of the entire later Lumia line.