Sony Xperia 1 VI review

Verdict

The Sony Xperia 1 VI takes a more consumer-friendly approach than previous pro-focused entries, with an easier-to-use camera system, meaningful display tweaks and impressive battery life. It’s just a little too expensive for most consumers.

Introduction

Sony doesn’t sell as many phones as Samsung or Apple, but it keeps making them.

Most years, I’m torn between being glad it still makes them – for variety alone – and confused as to the business sense of it with declining sales even in its home country signalling a seemingly inevitable demise. 

In those years, I’ve often found the focus on making it a pro camera phone alienates any other general phone buyer. But for 2024, things have changed, and I’m glad this phone exists.

Design

• Grippy, textured design
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Prone to accidental touches

It’s always refreshing when a smartphone maker does things a little differently from the norm. Especially when it comes to design, and especially when there are genuine pain points to address that can be addressed with a different approach. 

For instance, most smartphones have shiny or smooth metal edges and rear glass panels. For some, that can make keeping hold of them about as easy as gripping onto a live eel. 

So what’s the solution? Sony is handling those contact points very differently. 

There are subtle grooves running all the way around the edges of the phone, adding grip to the sides. And the entire rear of the phone is covered in raised dimples, again, adding grip. 

Every part of the phone that comes into contact with your palm helps keep it in your hand. It won’t slip easily, and you won’t find it sliding off the arm of your sofa as easily as most other smartphones. 

In fact, a huge amount of its design is made in an effort to be practical. 

Want to keep using your old wired headphones? No problem, there’s a 3.5mm port for that. Need access to your SIM, and don’t keep a SIM ejector tool on you at all times? Sony’s got you; you can remove the tray without a tool, just pull it from the bottom edge with a fingernail. And, by the way, there’s a microSD card slot in there too for expanding storage. 

These aren’t the only throwbacks to simpler times. Sony remains one of the few with a dedicated camera button for launching the app and snapping the photo. If nothing else, it adds a pleasant tactile experience to using a phone. 

You even get a physical fingerprint sensor built into the side so you don’t need to rely on an in-display one. It’s right where my right thumb rests naturally, for the most part, and unlocks quickly. 

But here’s where some of the efforts to be a practical device start to fall away a little. That fingerprint sensor is difficult to avoid when you grab your phone. I’d often find it register failed reads because it had brushed against a finger, or part of my hand. 

Similarly, Sony’s move to a wider display with much skinnier bezels has led to a lot of accidental touches on the display. For the first few days using it, I’d find myself tapping and swiping on the screen, for it to completely ignore my inputs. I realised after a little while that it was because the smallest part of my thumb or finger was touching the screen near the edge. 

As for overall durability, it’s got a dual water resistance rating against splashes and submersion, which is great. But on the other hand, the aluminium frame and nimble, lightweight feel of the device do make it seem a little weak compared to the heavier competition. 

In fact, when I try and twist the frame gently, it gives out a very audible creak, just letting me know it’s not particularly enjoying itself. Still, with a weight comfortably lower than the likes of the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the iPhone 15 Pro Max, there’s very little fatigue from holding it one-handed. 

Screen

• 6.5-inch FHD+ OLED screen
• New 19.5:9 aspect ratio
• Auto brightness can be slow to react

In the past, Sony has really pushed the boat out with the display, typically offering a 4K panel on previous versions of the Xperia 1. And, really, there was no particular benefit to having that many pixels on a display this small. So for 2024, it’s gone back to a more practical choice. All the way back, to Full HD+. 

It’s also made it a less narrow aspect ratio. Yet another practical move. The 21:9 cinematic look is gone, and now we have a 19.5:9 aspect instead, which is the same as what you’ll get on the Samsung Galaxy series phones. 

It’s far better, visually, having that extra surface area for displayed content, especially when gaming, watching 16:9 or 18:9 video, or even viewing photos which are typically much wider. So as much as I liked that the narrow screen on older models meant a narrow phone that was easy to hold, its added versatility means consuming or creating media is a far less compromised experience. 

You could argue that it should be QHD+, to add sharpness, but, in reality, with almost 400 pixels per inch, the 6.5-inch OLED display is plenty sharp enough. 

Text and details are crisp, and there’s no way to distinguish individual pixels, not at arm’s length. Plus, the reduction in pixel count, and the addition of an efficient LTPO panel for adaptive refresh rates means it consumes less energy, which has major benefits for battery life. 

My only real complaint with the display is auto brightness. It’s slow to respond when ambient lighting conditions change, especially when moving between shade and bright direct daylight outdoors, and that can make it hard to see. 

As is typical for Sony, there are very Sony-like tools in the display settings. Like the ability to manually adjust the white balance to a really granular level, or switching on Creator Mode or artificially sharpening videos with the ‘Image Enhancement’ toggle. 

Cameras

• Much simpler to use Camera app experience
• Returning 48MP Exmor-T sensor
• Impressive macro mode capabilities

In the past, Sony’s camera experience has been entirely tuned to the needs and skills of professional or amateur photographers. Those who want fine-tuned control over everything. This time out, Sony’s made things much easier, building on the simplicity it introduced with the Xperia 1 V in 2023. 

The camera app now defaults to a fully automatic mode, without any complicated controls on the screen beyond temperature and brightness/contrast sliders. So you can just point and shoot. 

It’s pretty wonderful, and features an automatic face/eye recognition ability to focus on the nearest eye of your subject, whether it be an animal or a human, and then snaps and processes the shots quickly and easily. 

The thing I love about it in general is that it doesn’t have that extreme processing you’d find on the likes of Pixel or Samsung phones. Colours look pretty much like they do to the naked eye, and there’s no exaggerated contrast or sharpness. 

There is a downside to that sometimes, in that with the HDR effect being minimal, brighter parts of images might get a little washed out at times, and the shadows can remain pretty dark, adding a contrasty look. 

What’s really great about this particular camera system though is the variety and versatility offered by the focal lengths. You get your primary and ultrawide cameras as normal, but there’s also a periscope zoom which can shift from 3.5x to 7.1x continuously, and optically. 

Most phones hit 5x zoom, and then have to rely on digital cropping and AI processing to sharpen images beyond that. There’s a lot less of that processing and sharpening with Sony. 

In theory then, that should mean brilliant, sharp images all the way up to 7.1x, but the reality – likely down to the 12-megapixel sensor used – is that pictures at that end of the scale do get a bit grainy-looking, particularly in the shade away from bright, direct light. 

I also found that because it doesn’t do lots of extra sharpening, details in some parts of the image get a bit hazy almost blurry-looking. But the colours are superb, not going so far into saturation that it looks hyperreal, instead keeping things vibrant and close to what the naked eye sees. 

This camera array also enables one of the best macro photography implementations in recent years. And this is a feature I utterly adored in my time testing the phone. 

It’s all quite manual, in that you have to switch to a dedicated macro mode and then slide a manual focus slider on the screen until the part you want in focus is highlighted with yellow. 

You also have to keep a very steady hand. But if you do, you’re rewarded with incredibly sharp, clean images of small objects from within a few centimetres. Whether it be the smiley face on a Lego miniature, tiny bugs, or the woven texture of a clothbound book, it’ll look great. And you can shoot video in this mode too, all the way up to 4K. 

It’s the type of feature that gets you to be right there, fully present in the experience of photography, ignoring the world around you or thoughts running through your head. I liked it a lot. 

Similarly, there’s the 2x zoom option which crops into the main sensor getting you pretty close to small objects, or shooting really nice-looking portraits. 

With all of that combined with the ultrawide, you get so much ability here. Whether you’re shooting wide landscapes, tiny bugs and berries, or portraits of friends and family, the Sony is equipped for it all. It’s one of my favourite all-round phone camera systems to date. 

It’s not all rosy though. Sony still has a bit of a weakness when it comes to shooting handheld at night time. Where other camera makers have fine-tuned their night mode algorithms so that you can just point and shoot, then get an in-focus, sharp, vibrant shot easily, Sony’s results aren’t as reliably sharp. 

I sometimes found the cameras struggled with focusing at night time, and end results were often grainy or noisy, but also, Sony’s night time algorithms don’t always completely get rid of the motion blur that comes from shooting completely handheld. 

I did like that Sony doesn’t attempt to ramp up the brightness and colours to look like daytime, like Samsung and Pixel might, but at the same time, it still needs the basics improved. 

Performance 

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 power
• 12GB of RAM and 256/512GB of storage
• Manages to stay cool

The Xperia 1 VI feels and acts like a flagship phone thanks to the inclusion of the top-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. With such a capable chipset, games and apps launch quickly and even in benchmark testing, the Xperia compared pretty much bang on with the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus. 

Under extreme load, it’s not going to handle long gaming stints as consistently as something like the S24 Ultra, or the Asus ROG Phone, but for everyday usage, there’s a lot of power here and it makes light work out of pretty much anything. It’s fast, smooth and gets the job done. 

The only time I felt it get warm was when I was running extreme stress tests in benchmarking platforms for an extended period. Rarely during gaming, if ever, even on warmer days did it get noticeably warm to the touch. 

Software

• Near-stock approach to Android 14
• Features creator-focused apps
• Only three major OS updates promised

As far as software goes, Sony has something of a light touch – which is refreshing in the world of Xiaomi, Honor and Samsung phones that all like to tweak things visually and preload phones with a boatload of extra stuff you don’t need.

For the most part, the UI looks and feels very similar to what you’d find on a Pixel. There are additional options in the Settings for doing things like tweaking the display colour settings, enabling Creator Mode and enhancing HDR and sharpness, which is very, well, Sony.

It also comes preloaded with some additional creator-focused apps. If you have a Sony Alpha camera, you can use the external monitor feature to use the phone as a bigger camera screen, or use the Creator’s App, Video Creator and Music Pro app all aimed at giving pro videographers and musicians something a little more suitable for recording and editing video and audio with. You even get a Headphones app for enhancing the audio experience of your earbuds or over-ears.

In short – Sony just likes to keep prodding us with reminders that it really cares about the media experience on its phones, and wants to make it as high-quality as it can.

If that all sounds good, one area does leave the phone feeling a little short-changed, and that’s the update promise from Sony. You’ll get three major updates and four years of security patches – which is some way from the seven years of OS updates Samsung and Google promise on their Galaxy and Pixel devices.

Battery life

• 5000mAh battery
• Can potentially get up to three days of use
• 30W wired charging speeds

If I told you to predict what the best thing about this Sony Xperia phone is, there’s a very good chance – based on previous models – you’d probably pick the display or the camera. With the Xperia 1 VI, those are both great this time too, but it was the battery life that really blew me away. 

I’m a pretty light user in general, and I live in an area that still doesn’t have 5G. And so my phone battery consumption isn’t usually huge. Getting near to the end of a second day with a big flagship phone is usually what I’d consider good performance for my own use case. But Sony’s Xperia blew past that. 

It’s advertised as a two-day battery – despite sporting a pretty standard 5000mAh call – but at a push, with light use, I could push it to the end of a third day, and only needed to charge it on the morning of the fourth when it eventually complete drained. 

Even compared to other Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered phones – which are generally great at making battery power last longer – the Xperia goes for a long time. I suspect even the heaviest users might just be able to push through two days, or at the very least, through a day and a half before reaching for a charger. 

Even measuring things objectively, a one-hour Netflix stream only drains around 5% battery, as does a thirty-minute stint on Mario Kart Tour. 

Once empty, charging it up again is a breeze, but only if you already have a fast Power Delivery charger and a cable, because, the phone comes with neither in the box. Not even Type-C cable. You get the phone, the box, the paperwork, and nothing else. 

It still takes more than an hour to fully refill, but 29 minutes is enough to get a 50% charge which, with this battery, is more than enough to last until the end of a day. 

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