I’ve never been a fan of hardware specific features for different regions for many different reasons – the most obvious one being that it makes little sense to offer superior devices for select areas which leaves your user base frustrated knowing that a better version of the product they want to purchase exists elsewhere. What a crummy feeling to know that you’re being penalized based on your geographic location and as it stands, US customers know this all too well with the last few iterations of Xperia handsets lacking a fingerprint sensor (though those have been turned off via software).

On the business end of it, this also makes little sense, especially for Sony who produces such low volumes of phones. That’s because by producing two different iterations of the Xperia X Compact, they’re forced to split up their manufacturing and in doing so, they miss out on economics of scale which helps bring component and manufacturing costs lower. Surely it’s more cost effective to divide the cost of waterproofing the Xperia X Compact across all units sold worldwide rather than just those being sold in Japan. Alas, Sony begs to differ or is looking at the situation differently than I am. As Xperia Blog writes:

 The lack of water resistance was one of our key disappointments when the phone first launched. Many pointed to the fact that as the device was only meant to be the ‘compact’ version of the Xperia X, rather than XZ, water resistance was always off the cards. Well it looks like Sony is going through the effort of giving Japanese owners peace of mind with regards to water damage, but it didn’t feel the same was necessary for the rest of us.

Sony has been able to integrate water and dust resistance without any compromise to the dimensions (129 x 65 x 9.5mm) and weight (135 grams) which remain identically to the global model. Again, in light of this, we don’t understand why this was not the base model for all users globally. 

Up until now, the Xperia X Compact didn’t offer waterproofing globally and while disappointing for some, the decision was either rooted in some form of engineering constraint or business decision that didn’t warrant the extra cost of providing it. With Japan now getting an identical device with waterproofing, it clearly throws the engineering theory out the window and leaves us with a business decision, but a biased one which makes recommending the phone harder when a better version of it exists that most of us simply won’t have access to.

Discuss:

Do you think all Xperia X Compact phones are secretly waterproof or do you think the Japanese model is different?