Nice choice on the XZ2. Like you I picked up a phone from the Xperia line. It's an older model than yours, namely the Z1 Compact, which I chose after filtering for form factor, LineageOS support, and price. I wrote about it here: https://hallau.world/post/the-perfect-android-phone/
That's a great little table you've built there, highly useful for finding new phones with LineageOS in mind, bookmarked! I wish I would've found it a week ago...
My previous phone, a Sony Z5 Compact, was sadly one of the worse phone experiences I ever had, software wise. I used it for 4 years and in the end it was sooo slow that was unbearable (maybe the internal storage degraded?). Battery life was great thou, 2 whole days when I bought it and in the end it was about 30 hours but after 4 years it was better then newer, just unpacked phones.
Wow, the Z1C is pretty old. Do you have any trouble with battery life?
I used to run a Z3C, but after some of the seals got loose I upgraded to an XZ1C. It's near perfect for me, and I don't know where I'm going to go next for a compact phone.
I also had a Z3C and upgraded to an XZ1C. I liked the Z3C's rounded rectangle design as the XZ1C can be uncomfortable to hold in certain configurations. And I liked the color tones for the Z3C more. Other than that I'm very happy with the XZ1C. I hope they put out another phone with the shape of the Z3C and the specs of current flagships.
I did have the same issue on the z3c with the seals coming loose. Eventually the glass panels got loose too.
Speaking of PIA and not using the provider's client, I've written this simple python script that populates PIA OpenVPN routes for NetworkManager on a bunch of Linux distributions, which then pop right into the system tray or are accessible from nmcli, etc. (https://github.com/dagrha/pypia)
