Xperias are definitely flagships in almost every spec except optimizing thermals compared to the competition (which is why they don’t perform as good relatively despite the exact same chip), & not with an affordable Chinese sticker price. The 10 series is even lightweight & can count in the ‘small phone’ category. They are only committed to 2 years of updates, but devices generally seem to get mainiline LineageOS support just by the end of those two years if you are comfortable with custom ROMs. I would assume that price as well as the 2-year updates is a big factor in why the community is more likely to mod devices much later in their lifecycle. Cameras can be okay, but really want their proprietary app. DAC is good.