Xperias are definitely flagships in almost every spec except optimizing thermals compared to the competition (which is why they don’t perform as good relatively despite the exact same chip), & not with an affordable Chinese sticker price. The 10 series is even lightweight & can count in the ‘small phone’ category. They are only committed to 2 years of updates, but devices generally seem to get mainiline LineageOS support just by the end of those two years if you are comfortable with custom ROMs. I would assume that price as well as the 2-year updates is a big factor in why the community is more likely to mod devices much later in their lifecycle. Cameras can be okay, but really want their proprietary app. DAC is good.
Mid range Samsungs and pretty much everything that's not made by either Apple, Google, or Samsung still has it. We are just in the ridiculous situation that the more expensive the phone the less functionality it has.