Sony’s Xperia 1 VIII is still a phone for the masses

The Xperia 1 VIII represents an attempt to shake up Sony’s flagship phone line. Sony has not only done an aesthetic overhaul, but has also revamped the camera system, dropping the continuous optical zoom that defines the image The last four generations of Xperia.

It’s not all that different. Sony staples like the 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card slot are still there, and some specific design touches, like the thick front bezel that fits the stereo speakers, remain intact. Sony’s ambitious pricing hasn’t changed either: the Xperia 1 VIII hasn’t launched in the US, but in the UK and Europe, starting at £1,399/€1,499 (about $1,850), rising to £1,849/€1,999 ($2,450) if you want 1TB of storage.

For Sony fans, this phone delivers the flagship basics, including a capable camera, and looks great doing it. For everyone else, you can find better Android phones at this price, e.g Xiaomi 17 Ultra or Vivo X300 Ultra.

Sony’s Xperia 1 phones look almost identical to each other Since 2020. It was a very nice design, to be fair, but it was probably overdue. the 1 viii It does just that, moving to a blocky new camera island and an unusual finish that makes the phone look completely different from every previous Xperia phone.

I’m a big fan of design that has a stark, brutal quality. The slightly textured texture – a bit like an incredibly smooth nail file – is designed to subtly vary between the back and the frame, helping to prevent the phone from feeling like a monotonous slab. The texture helps sell the phone’s high price better than ultra-smooth glass (not this one not so Glass, with Gorilla Glass Victus on the back and Victus 2 on the front).

I love the details, like how the edges of the camera island taper off sharply on three sides, while on the last side they slope down to meet the frame. Sony’s familiar two-stage knurled shutter button returns, adding another textural element and improved camera controls. Unfortunately, the same goes for the power button and fingerprint sensor, which are less reliable than modern under-screen options. It fails about a third of the time I try. I’m also confused by the strange rectangular patch above the volume rocker, which has a particularly rough texture and looks like it should do something, but doesn’t. Is it some kind of antenna outage? I asked for Sony.

Sony has long since abandoned its use Unique 21:9 screens with 4K resolution In the Xperia lineup. The 1 VIII uses a less impressive 1080p display in the standard smartphone aspect ratio. The resolution is low for this type of phone, but other than that I can’t complain about the panel, which is a 6.5-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate with decent brightness. I still miss the taller screens that Sony phones offer. Unlike most competitors, the display also isn’t completely interrupted by a camera cutout, notch, or dynamic island. The trade-off is the fairly thick bezels above and below the screen, which houses the camera and a pair of stereo speakers (good for phone speakers, but still phone speakers).

The internals of the Xperia 1 VIII are unremarkable, with the same feel Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite 5th generation You’ll find the chipset in most comparable phones. It’s paired with either 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage – available in black, red or silver phone versions – or 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. This model is only available in gold, which means anyone will be tempted by it Trump phoneWith the glossy finish and built-in headphone jack you can enjoy the same luxuries here for four times the price.

What He is What’s striking is that Sony has managed to make the 8 Elite Gen 5 perform so poorly. While the phone runs smoothly most of the time, I did experience frequent stutters and lag, especially in the camera or while switching between apps. It gets hot too. Using the phone to record audio of a recent press event, with the AI ​​transcription running in real time, the phone became alarmingly warm after just 30 minutes or so, and by the end of the hour-long call, the phone was hot to the touch.

I don’t like the battery either. Sony claims you’ll get two days of life out of the 5,000 mAh battery, but I don’t know how. I’m a light to moderate user most of the time, and have slipped into single-digit territory before bed more than once. This will last all day unless you push it hard, but expect to charge it every 24 hours. This may take a while too, given the 30W maximum speed, which is much slower than most competitors. only Google Pixel 10 Pro It charges very slowly.

I have better news on the camera front. After years of forging its own path, Sony has taken an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach to its main Chinese rivals, ditching its clever continuous zoom lens and instead packing the 1 VIII with the largest telephoto sensor it can fit. Sony dropped continuous zoom in the same year Xiaomi has finally copied it It better seem like a cruel twist of fate.

However, what the 2.9x telephoto lens (70mm equivalent) loses here in terms of versatility by giving up continuous zoom it more than makes up for in quality. This is mostly due to the move to a large 48MP 1/1.56-inch-type sensor — which is the same size as the ultra-wide sensor and almost as large as the 1/1.35-inch-type main camera sensor. These other cameras have not changed, in addition to the 12-megapixel selfie camera last year.

The telephoto camera and ultra-wide camera are the highlights, and both use relatively large sensors compared to the competition. I’m impressed with Sony’s daytime handling, which leans toward higher contrast and slightly more muted colors than some other phones, and night shots come out sharp and well-exposed too, although they still suffer under bright street lights. This is definitely Sony’s best phone camera yet and holds its own against the competition.

This is nothing but terrible new AI camera assistant. Most of the time, when you try to take a photo with the rear camera (not selfies — don’t ask me why), a pop-up window with four AI-suggested edits appears on your photos, before you even take them. The vast majority of these are just overly aggressive filters, either to increase contrast or reduce saturation, often to comically bad effect. Sometimes, algorithmically generated bokeh and Sony will be included Claims It may also suggest switching lenses to get a better frame, but that hasn’t happened for me yet. Every suggestion was noticeably worse than the default camera settings, and the popup alone was a distracting annoyance that seemed to make the camera app sluggish. Fortunately, you can turn it off, and if I wasn’t reviewing the phone, I would have done so right away.

The AI ​​camera suggestions seem emblematic of Sony’s Xperia line, which always delivers a surprising amount on paper and then manages to outperform itself. The headphone jack, expandable storage, and stereo speakers are great. The new design language is eye-catching and unique. The camera is the best ever. Sony’s relatively simple, streamlined approach to Android 16 also has its appeal, but the meager promise of four OS updates and six years of security support gives me pause. It has its annoying quirks, too: it keeps insisting on creating folders on the home screen, adding Facebook to my Instagram icon to create a Meta folder, and dumping a whole bunch of Google apps on top of Google Maps. Add to that the mediocre battery, performance issues, and high price, and it’s hard to recommend the 1 VIII to the average flagship buyer.

All of this leaves Sony right back where it started. It’s redesigned the Xperia, rethought its camera, and simplified its software, but this is still what it’s always been: a phone for fans. The rest of us can do better.

Photography by Dominic Preston/The Verge