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Like Hanukkah gifts, the DC cinematic universe, and No Man's Sky, sometimes the idea of something is far better than what's ultimately delivered to you. With that in mind, I would like to request that Sony cancel any plans to release an Xperia X Compact, which appears to have been leaked today by Evan Blass:
Sony Xperia X Compact pic.twitter.com/q2GKddYUqh
— Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 25, 2016
Sony's Compact phones are typically very close in quality and specs to their full-sized counterparts and are some of the best-looking small phones (4.6 inches or so) out there running Android. They also come in great colors a lot of the time, like this amazing aqua green on the Z3:
I've wanted to buy one of these things for years, only to be limited by the fact that I'm on a CDMA network while the phones only support GSM. This is simultaneously a curse and a blessing, because for as wonderful as every Xperia Compact looks, they always end up disappointing us in the end.
Somehow, things just keep going poorly for them. For instance, we loved the Z3, but Sony just announced that it won't be updated to Android Nougat, even though the phone is under two years old. And while the Z5 Compact was better than the Z5 itself, both were undercut by poor performance and old software.
The full-size Xperia X only fared worse in our tests, which means this is likely to be another Xperia Compact that looks good in photos and on paper, but just lets down those of us looking for a small phone. So Sony, my very professional recommendation is that you just let us keep imaging how good it could be, so that we don't wind up back in this same spot a few months from now. Or maybe just don't make a CDMA version again, so at least I can't consider buying one.