Sony thinks it's okay to advertise a $1,800 flagship on a $1,300 phone

The topic of system ads on smartphones has come up numerous times before, as the likes of realme, Xiaomi, and Samsung have all offered this in a bid to make more money. Samsung has since announced that it’s disabling system ads on its phones, but it looks like Sony is ready to step in.

A couple of Redditors (u/sergiocastell and u/EvilMonkeySlayer) spotted an ad popping up in the notification shade of their Sony phones. The ad promotes the release of the brand-new, $1,800 Xperia Pro-I smartphone. It’s unclear whether this is a wide-scale promotion or region-specific, but you can check out a screenshot below.

It’s worth noting that one Redditor got the ad on a $1,300 Sony Xperia 1 III, which is a 2021 flagship anyway. We could somewhat understand if people with much older Sony phones received the ad, but it seems a little pointless to push this out to people with new flagships.

This wouldn’t be the first time a smartphone brand offered system ads calling for users to upgrade to their latest phone though. Samsung was guilty of this practice too, but it recently disabled ads on its phones.

Sony’s move also comes after a recent Android Authority poll found that almost 85% of respondents hated system ads on their phones. So here’s hoping it follows Samsung’s suit and disables system ads too.