Let's be honest here, 4k never made any sense on a smartphone. It was just a way to sell it to people who had no idea. It actually might be straight up worse than 1440p because it draws more power.

With that, I always wanted one of those 5 phones but they are just a bit too pricy for what you get. Getting an s23 ultra was cheaper than the 5iv at the time (that's for 256 GB on the Samsung and 128 on the Sony btw).

The 5iv also had the snapdragon 8gen1 which was plagued by overheating and bad battery life according to reviews. I like the Sony phones in theory but they have to take a more critical look at their position in the market.

It doesn't help that their hardware releases take so long all the other companies move on to next year's SOCs by the time they release. Not sure when the 1vi will release so at the moment the 1v is still on the 8gen2 for example. You might say it doesn't really matter at this point, these are all great chips, but when you're paying a premium over other flagships it feels bad to get last years outdated hardware.