Great camera, but stumbles on basics

Design and build

• New look, but poor build quality
• 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card support
• Side-mounted fingerprint sensor

Even just in terms of design, there’s a gap between what Sony is aiming for and what it actually achieves with the Xperia 1 VIII.

Look at it from arm’s length – particularly in this glorious Garnet Red colour – and it seems like this picture-perfect attempt at minimalism and precision. The square cutout camera island with its sharp, defined lines and clean circular punch-outs for the lenses, combined with that matte, frosted glass look, is sublime to look at. At least from a little way away. 

It’s when you look closer, or pick it up, that the illusion shatters. For instance, there’s a very small gap around the glass panel on the back where it doesn’t quite sit flush up against the metal edges. And with enough time and use, that will collect dust, fluff and all manner of other tiny pocket detritus. Especially considering that the texture on the back is what I can only plainly describe as extra-fine sandpaper. 

It’s rough enough that you could file your nails with it if you wanted, and I mean that very literally. Don’t ask me how I know. Just know that, when you have a hypothesis, tests must be done. For science. 

You combine that rough texture with the sharp edges of the camera island, which often catch the side of my right index finger when I hold the phone – and it’s a phone I’d rather not hold more than I need to. So where the previous couple of Xperia phones were grippy, tactile delights, this one is very much not. 

Then there are other little details that jar. Like the fact that the external edge of the SIM tray and rectangular cover over the Wideband antenna don’t quite match the colour of the aluminium on the edges. It feels, putting it mildly, a bit rough and ready. I’ve even managed to scratch off some of the red finish on one of the edges. No idea how.

Still, as is always the case with Sony’s flagship phones, you get the mainstay basic features that pretty much every other phone maker has long since ditched. 

There’s a 3.5mm audio port on the top edge, which, in an age when wired earbuds are making a comeback, might just be a key feature. There’s also a microSD card slot built into the SIM tray so you can expand storage if you want. Although, given the price of memory cards these days, maybe not something you can do without selling a kidney first. 

Sony, for some reason, also continues to use a physical fingerprint sensor on the side of the phone rather than switch to an under-display sensor.

As with previous versions, I’ve found it really prone to accidental touches, leading to failed login attempts. But it has improved; I’ve not experienced that anywhere near as often as the older phones. And there’s always the option in the settings you can enable, to ensure that it only tries to unlock when you physically press the button at the same time. 

There’s also a physical camera shutter button, with a half-press function for focusing. I actually quite like this, but in an age when the side keys on premium phones are multi-functional touch-sensitive panels, it does feel a little basic.  Maybe that’s part of the charm though; it’s not trying to do too much, so it’s not complicated at all. 

What I will always appreciate is that there’s no punch-hole camera in the display, or any interruption at all. The selfie camera is built into the bezel on the top, as is one of two stereo speakers. 

Sony has long prioritised loudspeaker performance over following the trend of uniform bezels on all four sides. And those speakers are balanced, loud, and deliver good treble, midrange, and bass response. As you’d expect them to. I’ve heard better, but I’ve also heard much, much worse. 

Screen

• 6.5-inch FHD OLED panel
• Stuttering despite LTPO tech
• Deep, rich and warm colour profile

There’s not a huge amount to say about the display on this phone that couldn’t have been said about the previous couple of models. It’s a 6.5-inch 1080p LTPO OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, so it can ramp up and down incrementally. 

It doesn’t always do that instantly, however. I sometimes noticed a stuttering in animations within the interface when doing things like bringing up the app drawer from the bottom of the screen. 

But as far as colour processing and detail go, once you get into watching movies and video, it really shines. Sony’s colour is deep, rich and warm. It’s very inviting and enjoyable to watch. Unlike a lot of other phones I’ve used, it doesn’t push the brightness so far that it washes out the colours. 

Sony, as always, has a few different tuning options you can use too. With Creator Mode enabled, it becomes a little more muted, designed as a clean, studio-like palette that will undoubtedly appeal to anyone who uses their phone camera to film additional footage for projects. 

My only real criticism, from a colour standpoint, is that it seems to shift when you look at it from an angle. Looking at a white screen and changing the angle, it seems to shift slightly towards green, which can affect how a video appears when viewed at an angle other than head-on. 

Cameras 

• Triple 48MP rear camera system
• No actuating zoom lens, but higher-res
• Great colours, but frustrating bugs and quirks

Sony’s latest triple 48MP camera system will definitely get a reaction from fans of previous-gen models – if only because the actuating zoom lens on the back has been replaced with a more typical zoom camera and sensor.

That means you don’t get a lens that physically moves to offer a physical zoom anymore. Its telemacro feature was a lot of fun to use for anyone with a tripod and steady hands, but I’d argue the switch makes more sense for the vast majority who shoot handheld. 

The benefit of the new model is that it can digitally crop into a larger, more pixel-dense sensor and give you macro photos much more easily, with less patience required. You can still get relatively close to small objects, tap the 2.9x or 5.8x zoom button, and get a good, in-focus shot with not much effort at all. 

That, along with the AI shooting assistant Sony has added in the app, clearly shows that the Xperia is trying to appeal to less experienced photographers than before. But there’s a problem. Less experienced photographers – or any photographer in general – need a camera that’s consistently reliable and easy to use. And that means, when you tap to change the focal length or tap to shoot a photo, you want it to snap instantly the first time. 

The Xperia doesn’t do that. There’s lag when tapping to change cameras, and repeated taps are often required to actually snap photos. In fact, I’ve often had times when tapping the 0.7x, 1x, 2x, and other icons on screen freezes the camera view at one focal length. And that’s not to mention the AI framing guide interface floating on top of the screen, getting in the way at times. 

So, if you’re wondering how many times I’ve been tempted to hoy the phone into the sea when trying to frame a shot, the answer is: many times. Many, many times, I was tempted to lob it straight into the ocean. 

If you’re also wondering how useful the AI shot helper tool is, the answer is – not very. You’ll find yourself dismissing it more than actually using it. In my mind, it should be a separate camera mode in the app, not something floating across your video in the standard camera layout view. 

It’s this exact type of imprecision, and getting the basics wrong, that ultimately stands in Sony’s way. For all its efforts to offer the old basic practicalities like the physical storage expansion and wired audio, the camera app doesn’t work anywhere near as well as it should. 

That aside, I’m actually a really big fan of how Sony treats colours, shadow, highlights and texture with its cameras. You get a lot of variety in colour, there’s a difference in the subtle shades and shadows, but they don’t get lifted to such an extreme that everything in them looks grey and faded.

If I had to say which of all the cameras I’ve tested this past year delivered the most authentic take on what the scene actually looks like to the eyes, with minimal extra processing, it’s Sony.

One thing it seems to do more aggressively than most is tame highlights. So, as an example, if you take photos on a bright sunny day, and compare photos with the iPhone 17 Pro, you’ll notice far more bright spots and highlights from the iPhone, which strip the overall image of colour, where Sony tones it right down to help retain some of that colour. Giving, what I think, is a richer, more attractive overall look. 

And while the optical zoom levels aren’t there like they were on the last one, you can zoom to 2.9x or 5.8x and still get a solid picture at those lengths. 

Sony isn’t like other Android makers either, so it doesn’t boast about massive, misleading 100x zoom lengths that rely heavily on artificial processing. So the maximum it lets you go to is about 17x. At those lengths, pictures do lack quite a lot in detail and sharpness, so personally I wouldn’t go much beyond 10x if image quality is important to you.

Still, it is – again – refreshing to have a phone that hasn’t gone all-in on computational photography and mega zooms with photos that look like oil paintings. 

But if zoom photos are a big draw to you because you like shooting nature, animals and the like, I’d highly recommend the Vivo X300 Ultra. Not only does its zoom lens have a larger sensor, but there are also additional 200mm and 400mm lens kits available to get you closer to scenes. If I wanted to spend a day outdoors and snap photos of birds, bugs, plants and the like, that’s the phone I’d take. 

The night mode algorithm does a good job of taking photos when there’s not a lot of light available, and, just like in the daytime, takes photos that don’t seem as aggressively processed. So while most other phones tend to make details look a bit soft and painterly, the Sony is pretty faithful to those textures. Again, that’s actually quite refreshing. 

When filming video, there’s a difference between what you see on the screen and what the end result looks like. There’s quite a jarring, stuttering, rolling-shutter-like look to the video as it’s being captured on screen, even when shooting at 60 frames per second. But download that footage, or watch it back on the phone, and it’s perfectly smooth and clean. 

Performance

• Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and up to 16GB RAM
• Can get warm after a few minutes of gameplay
• Fine for everyday use, not for gaming

As far as raw performance and speed go, there’s plenty of grunt here to keep up with even the most demanding apps, games and situations. The combination of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and 12- or 16GB of RAM can easily run your top-tier game titles like Genshin Impact, Destiny Rising and Call of Duty Mobile. 

I did notice that after a few minutes of use, the phone starts to get warm, and under intense benchmark stress testing, it doesn’t quite last as long or as reliably as something like the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.

So it’s not quite as efficient when it comes to cooling. And when you consider it’s not pushing as many pixels on the screen as phones like the Oppo Find X9 Ultra or S26 Ultra – and that it can’t outperform them in terms of frame rates or consistency in those extreme situations despite that – it’s clear it’s not a phone built for outright performance. 

Still, for most people who aren’t sticking their mobile games into the highest settings and looking for the highest fidelity and smoothest gameplay for long periods, this phone works just fine. 

Software

• Near-stock Android 16
• Feels like it needs TLC
• Very little AI smarts

I think at this point, it’s safe to say the Xperia launcher and interface are starting to look quite dated. It’s still a very clean Android skin, but it very much has the look of a vanilla version of Android from years ago. And unlike most other manufacturers, it doesn’t really add much of its own with any real value beyond some niche creator apps. 

Like so much of this phone, it just feels as though the Xperia phone isn’t really getting any love from Sony at all anymore. To the point where it may be kinder to the phone to put it out to pasture, rather than let it continuously limp on for another generation. 

The only benefit of this approach is that there’s virtually no bloatware. And Sony’s smartphone division obviously hasn’t got the resources to put tonnes of AI into everything, so if you like an AI-free experience, you can get that (mostly) on the Sony Xperia.  

It’d be easy to see the lack of AI as a negative, but having used so many phones with AI crammed in every which way, I find it refreshing. 

I’d argue strongly that, for the most part, the best AI features are used in purpose-built apps, like Google Gemini, translation apps, voice note transcription apps, and similar tools. Since you can just download and install whichever ones you find useful, it’s not a huge miss to have a phone that’s not ramming AI down our throats from every angle. 

Battery life

• 5000mAh battery
• Lasts all day, but not as good as previous Xperias
• Takes almost 90 minutes to fully recharge

A couple of years ago, Sony’s Xperia phone switched from a 4K display to Full HD, and the result – along with a very efficient chipset – was incredible battery life. It was a proper two-day phone. It legitimately impressed me, and many other reviewers at the time. 

Sadly, although Sony claims the same for this one, the experience isn’t anything close to that of the Xperia 1 VI. 

Even for someone with relatively light use that rarely tops three hours of screen time in a day – and most of that pretty casual use – I’d still finish a day with closer to 40% left over than 50 or 60. Some days it would be even less. For a phone with a 5000mAh battery, 1080p display and LTPO tech, I’d argue that it is actually quite poor. 

My feeling, although hard to say for sure, is that the more power-hungry Elite Gen 5 processor in this new version is drinking more battery juice than previous models. Because even while in standby mode and seemingly not really doing much, the phone would sip battery in the background, dropping steadily over the course of the day. 

In fact, just to see what was going on, one day I’d charged it to 100%, disconnected my smart watch, took out the SIM card and left it on my desk. I came back to it the next day, and in that 24-hour period, it dropped more than 30%. That’s highly inefficient for a modern phone. 

So, where the Xperia 1 VI was the ultimate device for going and going, this newer version feels like quite a step backwards. And while the charging speed is quick enough to be convenient, it’s still not near the levels of the other devices in its price range. 

Sony’s spec sheet says it supports 30W wired charging. Plugged into a fast charger with a display showing wattage, it would be pulling about 25-27W most of the time. From empty, it could refill about half the battery in half an hour and took 85 minutes to fully recharge. That’s about half an hour longer than the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra to 100% – a phone that has the same-sized battery.

Should you buy it?