I recently bought the XZ2 Compact and have been enjoying my phone so far.
As Steam released it's BETA streaming client and steam controller support under android this enabled alot of new options for gaming. Just when I was getting excited for gaming on the go on my phone through VPN + Inhome, I got hit by immense dissapointment when I found out that Sony decided to disable the HDMI support through USB-C.
My plan was to buy the Sony MP-CL1A pico projector (https://www.sony.com/electronics/projector/mp-cl1a), connect my phone through HDMI, connect my steam controller over bluetooth and I would have an amazing gaming platform on the go.
Sony stated in another message here on the board that the removal of HDMI has been a design choice. I would like to hear the reason why Sony has actually put effort into removing a feature that is available on the SOC by default. Every other phone with this SOC supports usb-c to HDMI and it is even a part of the USB-C protocol...
Miracast is not a viable replacement for HDMI, it is slow and only usefull when giving a powerpoint presentation.
So please Sony, it would be greatly appreciated by the entire community if you enable this standard feature on the XZ2 compact. Enabling this is a software change, not a hardware change. When this feature is supported I will instantly buy the pico projector to use with my phone.
Stating this this change is by design while knowing that this does not change anything to the hardware layout or appearance on the phone simply means that this "design" change is purely based on forcing your end users to use miracast and earn extra money over sold miracast devices.
Currently not having this feature made me decided not to buy another Sony smartphone in the future.
I hope that someone at Sony could give us an actual answer with better reasoning than "it is by design".
