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For those who can get past the imperative to own Apple hardware, Sony is taking somewhat the opposite approach with their Open Device Program. The high resolution of the premium model makes it nice for diy VR as well.

They obviously didn't test it against a modern 4k phone display like https://www.sonymobile.com/ca-...
458ppi? Try 806. What a laugh.

Sony has been an exceptionally good citizen wrt repurposing smartphones, see here among other places (yes, other Sony divisions did bad things in the past, but not related to phones afaik).
Google Nexus devices are also in Linux mainline.
Vote with your wallet.

I believe Sony provides access to the drivers of some of their hardware via their Android Open Source Project, which is making the release of Sailfish for Xperia X possible.

• -- Linux, Open source (mostly), easy to use, Android compatibility, ARM chipsets, not Apple or Google. Also, its not American-centric, if that matters to you.

Read more here, wikipedia here, the Toolkits here, and the Sony handsets here. And if you are enough of a hardware hacker, there are numerous other handsets to try it on.

Is it 100% complete? Almost, just missing a few sensors and bluetooth, but its sure better than starting from scratch.

There are a few of you around that are anti-Sony or got burned on the Jolla tablet and won't consider this. So have fun with your spy gizmo from Apple or Google.

It takes Courage (tm) and money -- lots of money -- for Apple to steal competitor-developed innovations like edge-to-edge screens (Samsung 2014), splash resistance (Sony 2006), HDR displays in a mobile form factor (Sony 2017), and OLED screens in phones (Nokia 2008)... not to mention wireless Qi charging (Nokia 2012)

It's only fair for Apple to charge more than Android devices to deliver the kind of inventions that they umm, borrow.

Either Entrope's tongue is firmly in cheek or...

Buy a Sony Xperia, then unlock (manufacturer supported), clone the manufacturer gits and off you go. They support Android Open Source Project out of the box, but Mozilla has run Firefox OS on it, Ubuntu supported it before they quit and Jolla has announced Sailfish OS for it.

https://developer.sonymobile.c...

Usually one big problem I see with these projects is that it's difficult to both build a phone OS and come out with hardware at a manufacturing scale that allows selling the hardware people want at a price people can afford. Sony has some decently nice hardware involved in their Open Devices project. HTC also has released kernel source code. Maybe it would be valuable to bring the new OS first to one of these devices that already has market share and look into building mobile phone hardware later on in life.

You can get noise cancelling headphones that are powered by your phone instead of a separate battery

Newsflash, Sony already provides such headphones as accessories for its Xperia range of smartphones, which still have analog jacks.

Also available for select Sony mobiles.

http://developer.sonymobile.co...

Or the just announced Sony Xperia Z5 Premium - 3840x2160 5.5" screen with 806 PPI.

806.

http://www.sonymobile.com/glob...

Look, we all know that marketing materials are fluff, and should not be relied upon when buying or using a piece of equipment. It seems fairly obvious to me that by "water proof" they mean "water resistant" and they make it clear that it is not designed for dedicated underwater use such as a GoPro-like device. But you can probably still drop it in your toilet and it will work after being fished out.

They make it clear that the phone can be taken underwater up to 1.5m deep and up to 30 minutes. Why would someone read this and assume that the phone is only waterproof enough for use in the rain?

http://www.sonymobile.com/in/p...

The Xperia Z3 is waterproof and protected against dust as long as you follow a few simple instructions: all ports and attached covers are firmly closed; you can’t take the phone deeper than 1.5 m of water and for longer than 30 minutes; and the water should be fresh water. Casual use in chlorinated pools is permitted provided the phone is rinsed in fresh water afterwards. No seawater and no salt water pools.

If it's in-viewfield stereoscopic augmented reality you're after Sony has a developer edition on the market. And yes, that's the state of the art. Manufacturing high transparency hologram waveguides is THAT hard.

http://developer.sonymobile.co...

(Just making a small screen to the side of the viewfield is incredibly easy)

There are already a number of waterproof phones on the market. Google brings up several hits. Here's one that is made for filming under water...
http://www.sonymobile.com/us/p...

Yes, wouldn't it be wonderful is somebody released a Water resistant or waterproof mobile.

(more standardized wireless charging would be nice though)

False. Sony Xperia has it officially supported since a year. http://developer.sonymobile.co... For the current state of OpenCL on smartphones, see: http://streamcomputing.eu/blog...

I had the same problem. I'm in Canada on Wind Mobile (AWS frequency) and also spend a lot of time in Europe. I wanted one phone that works on every major network in North America and in Europe. The only one I found that did this, without having two (or more) versions, is the Sony Z1 Compact. I believe the "standard" Z1 and the Z2 also support all the same bands.

The Z1 Compact also happens to be a great phone to boot. I'm quite happy with it.

After having owned a Galaxy S3 for a year, I'm ready for the return of smaller phones. I've been waiting for prices to come down on used GS4 Minis. However, if they released a OnePlus with a 4" screen, I'd order it immediately.

A phone configured specifically for CyanogenMod is a killer feature in my book. My next phone will have to be much smaller, lighter, and thinner than 5.5" unfortunately. Any suggestions?

If you want a flagship phone then Sony Xperia Z1 Compact will probably suit you http://www.sonymobile.com/glob... a 4ish inc phone with Snapdragon 800

The Sony Xperia Z Ultra has a multi-touch screen that you can also use a stylus with to get more precision.

Chroot's still aren't as good. My N900 could run some games I made using PyGAME (all I had to do was something like sudo apt-get install python-pygame) and it was good to go - ran the game just as well as my laptop did, with acceleration. Beautiful.

Unfortunately my N900 screen broke for a second time last year, and I threaded one of the screws trying to replace it, so I too found myself looking for a replacement phone. Even with overclocking the N900 was painfully slow on complex websites, so I wanted something modern but with a hardware keyboard. I couldn't find anything except possibly the Neo900 (which didn't have an ETA at the time - and I wouldn't have been able to wait for anyway), so I decided that I would get the biggest screen I could find - the logic being that if I have to use a virtual keyboard I want it to provide an experience as close to a hardware keyboard as possible.

Hence, I now run a Sony Xperia Z Ultra with the Hacker's Keyboard. Obviously not as good as a hardware keyboard, but the screen size means the virtual keyboard can fit all keys I had on the N900 (and then some) and still have plenty of room to see the text-box I'm typing into.

The Xperial Z Ultra also has expandable storage so a chroot is feasible, and I admit I've used this phone much more than my N900 due to it being more practical for games, e-mail, taking pictures, etc. Sony also provide instructions on unlocking the bootloader. However, lacking a true GNU userland environment for the primary OS, along with lacking the ease of gaining root and lacking a replaceable battery) are things I really miss. I also hate how much of the bloatware cannot be removed, although it can be disabled. It is waterproof though, so it's got that going for it.

I nuked or disabled almost everything related to Sony and Google Play and installed F-Droid instead, and then proceeded to install Firefox Mobile, K-9 and APG, Xabber, TTRSS-Reader, VLC, Open Explorer, Barcode Scanner, Terminal Emulator, Cool Reader, Document Viewer, Aard, OsmAnd~, ScummVM, AnkiDroid, World Clock, VX ConnectBot, a few ownCloud-related sync apps... and of course Frozen Bubble, and now Android can do most of the things I would have used my N900 for.

Difficult, but it can definitely be done (even if only on the flagship model right now): http://blogs.sonymobile.com/press_release/new-xperia-z-1-worlds-best-camera-in-a-waterproof-smartphone/

To be fair the Sony Xperia Tablet Z is only 6.9mm thick and only 1.1 pounds... The rest of the specs are also about the same, and that's been out for a month or two now.

This may have been true a few years ago with Android handsets generally being underpowered, but the hardware caught up a while ago already.

I'm pretty sure the lag when task switching is due to insufficient RAM, not being underpowered. I'm still on a 3 year old Galaxy S (single core, 512 MB). If I use the carrier-provided Android 2.3 it's pretty snappy and only lags if I force it to task switch while it's busy processing something else. But I've loaded Jelly Bean on it to get some of the newer Android features. With a clean install it's still snappy. But it starts to lag after I've loaded just a few apps. In order to keep it responsive, I've actually had to ditch most of the 200+ apps I originally had in 2.3. When I check system memory, about 450 MB is in use after it boots. A good chunk of that is "default" Google stuff that I need, like the Play store, gmail, account manager. I'm saving a good chunk by refusing to install Hangouts (I uninstalled Google+, but for some reason Hangouts keeps wanting to install). (And before you ask why I don't upgrade, I'm still trying to find a decent water resistant phone which works with polarized glasses. The S4 Active seems to work, but alas it's an AT&T exclusive.)

Check out the Sony Xperia Z ( http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/phones/xperia-z/ ) Its quite durable and water resistant. I'm getting it for my fiance. We have a toddler that sometimes hides her phone. Eventually he'll get it wet. The specs are great and the reviews are decent.

You REALLY REALLY don't want to know!

Let's just say that your phone should be waterproof...

Not only were there Microsoft watches previously, but there are currently Android watches, Apple watches (slightly discontinued), and a Microsoft table platform that used to be called Surface. They definitely have plans to take over walls, but so far that's still limited to projector-powered prototypes at Microsoft Research as far as I know.

also sony,
https://myxperia.sonymobile.com/

I've seen gaming headsets that mix two audio sources (is yours the PS3 headset?), but I haven't found wireless earbuds available that do that (thinking more about it, it seems my problems are only with wireless earbuds (I've had sets from two manufacturers)).

I use the Sony SBH20 wireless earbuds: http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/accessories/stereo-bluetooth-headset-sbh20/ Seems to work fine. I haven't had any problem with mixing up devices, but I'm pretty careful about turning off BT whenever I don't use it to save battery. So I turn on the headset (or keyboard), then turn on BT on the device I want to use. Then turn both off once I'm done.

Still happy using my Sony Xperia Mini precisely because it's so tiny (88mm by 52mm) I'd love to replace it with something newer/more powerful but it seems nobody is making anything even near this size anymore. I don't even want a 4" screen, let alone these monsters...

The Sony Ericsson XPeria Play is for you. A gampad in the phone. For some reason it wasn't very popular in the US, but it seemed fine to me.

My experience with random Android devices is it's hit or miss on rooting. If you have a good OEM (Asus has been good to me) then it's not a problem. But if you have ones that lock it down it's not any different than having an iPhone.

Actually, it's a lot better than what you think (and much better than it used to be several years ago -- I looked into this the other day). Motorola, HTC, Sony and even some of the smaller providers such as Huawei all provide the means to officially unlock the bootloader on many of their phones. Even Samsung provides "Developer Editions" of their major phones that come with an unlocked bootloader by default; and of course every Nexus device is simply a "fastboot oem unlock" away from complete freedom. Impressive, no? There's now an awful lot of devices that you can officially install a custom recovery on and root out of the box, and it's testimony to the strength of the Android dev community that manufacturers actually want to provide this functionality.

Although I wish someone would port apt-get to Android so we can install apps like you can with Cydia.

Well, you don't really need it, unless you have a particular boner for apt-get. Google's own Play Store hosts many apps that do the same thing as those provided by Cydia; since Google has always promoted rooting rather than been adverse to the practice, there's never been a need to have a separate software repository for rooted devices. There are, of course, several other alternate app stores around should you wish to install software through non-Google means and be notified of updates.

http://www.sonymobile.com/gb/products/accessories/smartwatch/

Sony does have an Android watch that is been out for a year or more.

But history will be rewritten so that Steve Jobs would be the pioneer of smart watches, and even doing so from his grave too ...

Assumedly something like the I'm Smart or the Sony Smart Watch, or the Pebble.

I'm personally keen on the latter because it sounds more hackable, but I'd be assuming that's not where Apple would be coming from...

yes. it's likely that any smartwatch will incorporate bt.
of course, if you'd like one.. http://www.sonymobile.com/us/products/accessories/smartwatch/

not too many people want one though.

It was supposed to support things like Facebook and show you email alerts, along with being a basic watch. It came with a watchband and a clip housing, one of which (I forget which) completely covered the USB charging port and you had to pop it out to plug it in. It was almost working as a watch, but the limited button UI was a mess and difficult to remember/use.

Interesting concept, poor implementation.

What is most important is that it show the time (synced to the local phone network so it is accurate). Second would be incoming SMS/email (so you don't have to pull a phone out of your pocket to get messages.) Music player control. It has to have an inductive charger plus a standard USB, so you can recharge it away from home or just drop it on the charging pad at night when you aren't.

Sony already makes an Android watch, the SmartWatch ...

But this will be Apple's ... Ooooh ... Shiny ...

I bet Apple are already briefing the lawyers on how it infringes their patents

Sony already makes an Android watch, the SmartWatch ...

But this will be Apple's ... Ooooh ... Shiny ...

The biggest difference is that I've heard of this non-existent iWatch but I've never heard of Sony's watch. Thanks for the link, though, I'd actually like to check on of those out, just out of curiosity.

Sony already makes an Android watch, the SmartWatch ...

But this will be Apple's ... Ooooh ... Shiny ...

Does it come with a root kit? ... Ooooh ... free software ...

Sony already makes an Android watch, the SmartWatch ...

But this will be Apple's ... Ooooh ... Shiny ...

http://www.sonymobile.com/us/products/phones/xperia-active/

Shock resistant, water resistant. (You can't make one truly waterproof without getting rid of things like the USB/charging port and the earphone/mic port).

But - it's one of the poorest selling cell phones out there. So, the market has basically said, we don't want/need a waterproof phone.

http://unlockbootloader.sonymobile.com/

http://unlockbootloader.sonymobile.com/

Feel free to download Jellybean roms from XDA.

(This _might_ be slightly off topic ;)

To be fair, in context the difference between "Linux" and "BSD" is of no relevance ;) However - while the iPhone created the market, which Sony Ericsson P800 failed to do even though it was in effect the same type of product, the question was then which system in that new market would provide the best experience. Symbian was obviously a contender, but failed in comparison to Android on the relevant metrics.

The following two blog posts of mine contains the reasoning behind that choice:

http://developer.sonymobile.com/2009/09/02/its-not-about-smartphones/
http://developer.sonymobile.com/2009/11/03/speed-of-innovation/

(This _might_ be slightly off topic ;)

To be fair, in context the difference between "Linux" and "BSD" is of no relevance ;) However - while the iPhone created the market, which Sony Ericsson P800 failed to do even though it was in effect the same type of product, the question was then which system in that new market would provide the best experience. Symbian was obviously a contender, but failed in comparison to Android on the relevant metrics.

The following two blog posts of mine contains the reasoning behind that choice:

http://developer.sonymobile.com/2009/09/02/its-not-about-smartphones/
http://developer.sonymobile.com/2009/11/03/speed-of-innovation/

Swedish Sony developers, who use QWERTY-keyboards themselves, hard code for AZERTY?

Sounds weird. Anyhow, here's the latest on updates: http://talk.sonymobile.com/thread/38384

I think Sony Xperia line of products are doing something that allow USB data (OTG) and charging at the same time, see https://sites.google.com/site/sonicboomworld/ video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v7DjU6nsVM .

This guy built a dock that is able to charge the device when it is being a USB Host. I have read the official Sony Live Dock does it and I think it is true (who will build a dock and advertise that you can plug a PS3 controller/Mass storage device... and not charge at the same time) but I am searching for confirmation

What you can't do apparently is charge and power and USB guest device, If you are charging the external device must be powered by other means. The Sony dock apparently powers the device. This is what I have understood by I could be mistaken

Not only did Sony start the whole official support for unlocked bootloaders, they have been so good at contributing back to Android that they're now getting official AOSP support.

http://unlockbootloader.sonymobile.com/

"I've added a git project for the Sony LT26, i.e. Xperia S. This seems like a good target: it's a powerful current GSM device, with an unlockable bootloader, from a manufacturer that has always been very friendly to AOSP" - JBQ

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/?fromgroups#!msg/android-building/zji_sQGN9Oo/MoaS0xidmRMJ

It seems to work out just fine.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro seems like it would suit you.
I believe it's supported by CM as well.
http://www.sonymobile.com/cws/corporate/products/phoneportfolio/specification/xperia-mini-pro

http://unlockbootloader.sonymobile.com/

http://unlockbootloader.sonymobile.com/