It can’t be easy to maintain a loyal fanbase when selling less than half a million devices per quarter, but somehow, that’s precisely what Sony‘s long-struggling smartphone division has managed to do all these years, building excitement among an undoubtedly small yet extremely vocal group of mobile consumers for products like the Xperia 1, the XZ family, and now the impossibly named Xperia 1 II.
While decidedly unconventional (most of the time in a good way) and objectively impressive from a technological standpoint, the company’s Android handsets are often born suffering from an incurable disease. The overpricing syndrome does get better with time, as Sony’s official US retail partners can’t help but try to sweeten these deals after a while.
Although we still wouldn’t exactly call the Xperia 1 a crazy bargain, the latest discounts available on Amazon certainly make the 6.5-inch phone more attractive than ever. Originally priced at an arguably excessive $950, the Snapdragon 855 powerhouse is currently on sale at $252 less than that in both black and purple models equipped with unlocked support for Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile’s 4G LTE networks.
Interestingly, this particular deal is fulfilled by Amazon, but the actual devices are sold by Focus Camera. The e-commerce giant itself sells brand-new unlocked Sony Xperia 1 units backed by a standard 1-year US warranty at an additional $100 discount, with those particular devices currently being listed as backordered and “due in stock” August 29, with reservations however still possible at the time of this writing.
Meanwhile, Focus Camera also sells the unlocked Sony Xperia 5 for $100 off its $698 sticker price on Amazon with a 64GB microSD card and some cheap Fashion Color EX Series
earbuds included at no extra charge.
The
Xperia 5 is on sale at the exact same price with no bundled accessories from Adorama on Amazon too, with the Xperia 1 fetching the same aforementioned $252 less than its $950 MSRP alongside a 16-inch laptop backpack and a PhoneSuit Energy Core Studio 5,000mAh power bank when bought from Focus Camera through Amazon as part of a separate listing.
In case you’re wondering, the
Sony Xperia 1 and
Xperia 5 are pretty similar, featuring an identically unorthodox 21:9 aspect ratio, as well as a traditional design with (thin) top and bottom screen bezels instead of a cutout of some sort. The two extra-tall phones also share the same high-end SoC (from last year), the same 6GB RAM count, 128 gigs of internal storage space, and the same three 12MP rear-facing cameras.
The biggest difference is the smaller 6.1-inch OLED panel on the Xperia 5, which also happens to sport a far less impressive resolution than the 4K
pixel count of the Xperia 1.
