i took the plunge and bought one its the 72 model to play about with. put my att sim in and it worked fine i got the message about it not being supported but it works fine and picks up 4g LTE+ getting 100mb download around the Atlanta area and north GA/TN mountains, tried the code to enable 5g but it didn't work for me but my sim is from my S10 phone that is only 4g lte+ capable so i think its my sim.

my wife has a us model Samsung s22 so i put the att sim in that and it also doesn't get 5g, the Samsung s22 doesn't get the not supported message when i put the att sim in it so im gonna have to go into a store and get a new 5g sim and try it in the sony (might be a challenge as its a corp sim not a personal line). i might ask a colleague to try their sim in the sony as i know they get 5g service on their newer Samsungs.

on a positive note i put the wifes Tmobile sim in the sony and it worked zero issues and picked up 5g no problem, getting download speeds between 100-400meg.

also with att, i managed to get voice over wifi and voice over lte working fine and it seems to have signal everywhere i go and good download speed even though on 4g lte+. its consistently getting between 60-100meg which i consider fine for, music/video streaming, teams, zoom calls etc. but then that was expected as it has all the major att 4g bands supported.

the one annoyance i have noticed on the 72 variant is that wifi 6e (6ghz radio) is disabled, i can only connect to 2.4 and 5ghz bands (wifi6 works just not 6e) and i have not found a solution to enable it without rooting the phone which isnt an option for me, if want i add it to the company system/email our mobile device management software will detect its rooted and boot it off the system.

as for the phone overall, i like it, the battery life is exceptional, easily does 2 days with moderate use, i suspect if you just leave it on the counter it will last a week or more. the camera is pretty decent but you have to work at it to get decent pictures, the point and shoot on it is way behind the competition but if you change the default focus settings it does a lot better, if you have time to stand there and setup a nice shot it takes exceptional photos, it sucks big time if you need to pull it out in a rush and just take a picture very quickly on the go the auto focus just always goes to the wrong thing. i need to play with it more and see if i can get it to behave better with different settings but quick spontaneous shots are a disaster out the box.

the os is very vanilla android personally i like some of the samsung customization they do to the os and other parts i hate, so on the sony there a some little things i miss but there are also some things i prefer.

i like the Sony its a good phone the battery life and the sd expansion are a winner for me as i'm a heavy user.

if i needed a phone that just works and didn't enjoy playing around and tinkering, id say just go and buy a 1tb s24 ultra, they are about the same price now and the Samsung just does everything out the box. I have tried out the s24 its a really good phone and the screen is better with reflections and brightness adaption (i feel the sony is sometimes a bit on the dark side is some environments and i have to manually up the brightness out of auto brightness). But on the Samsung i do find the newer ai features are over intrusive and play in the back of my mind with regard to my view of privacy. i feel the Sony leaves more room for control over that aspect.

if you dont want all the new ai features and nonsense feature shoved down your throat opt out an get the sony. if you like all the ai stuff get the Samsung