Android Headliner: Why Can’t Verizon have nice Things?

So this week, we put out our review of the Sony Xperia Z3v. It also went on sale in Verizon stores on Thursday and it’s going for $199 on a new two-year contract. Prior to the review going live, I had spent about a week with the device as my daily driver. Now I’ll preface the rest of this editorial by stating that I have not had hands on a Sony smartphone since the Xperia Z1s on T-Mobile which was back in mid-January. So I have not touched or really seen the Xperia Z2 or Xperia Z3 in person. When I was using the Xperia Z3v, I really liked it. Now I knew it wasn’t a proper Xperia Z3, but it was at least something from Sony here in the US, which is what we’ve been begging for, for years. It was kind of a mix between the Xperia Z3 and the Z2, but branded for Verizon.

So why can’t Verizon have nice things? Well because they have to put their tramp stamp all over their phones. Anyone remember the Galaxy Note 2? With Verizon’s logo on the home button? What about the LG G2 with THREE Verizon logos on board? Or the LG G3 with, again, three logos on it. Yeah Verizon did the same thing with the Xperia Z3v. But there’s only two this time around. There’s one on the front below the front-facing camera and another on the back. Why can’t we just have one logo on the back of the phone? Do we really need that many logos? Typically I don’t complain because we actually use the logos to get macro shots that we use on the site. But you’ve got Sprint that does no branding at all, and then Verizon that over brands. If we could just get something in the middle.

It’s not all about the logos though. Verizon also loaded up the Xperia Z3v with a ton of bloatware. Not that, that should surprise you. But there’s roughly 20 apps from Verizon that are pre-loaded on the Xperia Z3v. That is a major reason why Sony has stayed out of the US. They don’t want to deal with bloatware, and carrier updates, and carrier branding. And I can’t blame them. But at this point, there’s not much of a choice for them, now is there?

While it is nice to see Sony back on Verizon, and I’m excited to see how well the Xperia Z3v does for them, I really wish they’d tone it down. The Xperia Z3v is a beautiful looking device, and it’d look even nicer without the extra logo. And while you do have 32GB of storage plus a microSD card slot, it’d be nice to boot up a brand new phone and not have 75+ apps pre-installed.

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