Sony Xperia 1 V review

Best Prices Today: Sony Xperia 1 V

You certainly couldn’t call Sony inconsistent. 

The Xperia 1 V is the fourth Sony flagship phone in a row to look essentially identical. It’s not just the design that’s stayed similar either, with a fundamentally similar ethos that means this shares the same strengths and weaknesses as the phones that came before. 

Expect a slender build, a detailed display, and a powerful chipset at the heart of the phone – all held back by slow charging, a complicated camera, and an excessively high price point. 

If Sony’s idiosyncrasies line up with your own then you might well love the Xperia 1 V, but if their former flagships have left you cold then this latest model will do nothing to change your mind. 

Design & build 

• Tall, thin body 
• Dimpled, grippy glass finish 
• IP65/68 

From the front, the Xperia 1 V looks exactly the same as last year’s 1 IV. The phone is almost exactly the same size, shape, and weight – meaning you get an unusually tall, slim device that’s designed to be comfortable to use with one hand. 

The only real change is to the back, where Sony has replaced its previous matt finish with a new textured effect. It’s still finished in toughened Gorilla Glass (Victus, with the newer Victus 2 standard on the screen), but the glass is now dimpled all over. 

It sounds a little odd, but the effect is that the phone feels grippy and textured rather than slick – in fact, it doesn’t really feel like glass at all, which is enough to screw with your head a little. 

I’m a big fan of the effect, which is subtle but certainly unique, and makes my black model feel a little more interesting. The phone is also available in silver or green if you prefer. 

The phone’s back is still finished in toughened Gorilla Glass, but the glass is now dimpled all over

The phone is waterproof too, with Sony’s unusual IP65/68 rating. This makes more sense than it seems – the two ratings are technically different, with the former guaranteeing a certain level of splash protection and the latter protection from being immersed in water. With a rating against both, this is the best water-resistance guarantee on the market. 

Screen & speakers 

• 4K, 120Hz OLED panel 
• Not LTPO 
• Stereo speakers 

Few areas of the Xperia 1 V call back to its predecessor as much as the display, which Sony itself admits is exactly the same. 

For the most part, that’s not a bad thing – this is a 6.5in OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate and still-rare 4K resolution – Sony strangely remains essentially the only manufacturer kitting its flagships out with 4K panels. 

The downside is that it also means Sony still hasn’t jumped on the LTPO bandwagon – the more recent upgrade to OLED tech that allows high refresh rate displays to dynamically scale their refresh rate, dropping low to conserve battery when appropriate. It’s de rigueur for Android flagships now, and Sony’s screen – while brilliant in other respects – feels a touch behind here. 

Sony strangely remains essentially the only manufacturer kitting its flagships out with 4K panels

It’s also unusual in sticking to a cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio, though this quirk is one I’m a fan of. It makes this a great phone for watching movies on, but it’s also simply more comfortable to use, and it fits in extra content vertically when you want to doomscroll through Twitter or Instagram. 

The stereo speakers here aren’t too bad, with a nicely balanced sound profile, but the maximum volume is a little limited and slight distortion sets in as you get close to that mark. There are better out there, which is odd given Sony’s audio credentials. 

Where the phone does set itself apart is the inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone jack. You may not care if you’re already committed to Bluetooth cans, but if you’re an audiophile for whom only a physical connection will do, this is the premium phone for you. 

It also supports the LDAC codec for Hi-Res audio over Bluetooth, for audiophiles who have ditched their wires. 

Specs & performance

• Top-tier Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip 
• 12GB RAM as standard 
• Unreliable fingerprint sensor 

It’s no surprise that one of the definite upgrades to the Xperia 1 V is the jump to the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip.  

The phone is fast and fluid, handling day-to-day tasks with ease

This puts the phone among the most powerful Android models on the market right now, bolstered by 12GB of RAM as standard and either 256GB or 512GB of storage, varying by market. 

The long and short of it is that the phone is fast and fluid, handling day-to-day tasks with ease. This will be a good option for everyday users, committed gamers, or the productivity-focussed hoping to use the phone to power their work life on the go. It doesn’t get much better. 

Connectivity comes in the form of 5G support, Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi 6E, and NFC – all up to the latest standards. 

It only supports a single physical SIM card, but you can use two SIMs if one of them is a digital eSIM. There is, however, a slot for a microSD card, which supports up to 1TB of extra storage – and is accessible without a SIM tool, for easy swapping out on the go. 

As for biometrics, you get the option of face unlock or fingerprint using a scanner built into the power button. These used to be more reliable than under-display options, but the tables have turned now and Sony feels left behind – this scanner is a little sluggish, and sporadically fails to recognise my thumbprint at all. Other phones are simply better here. 

Camera & video 

• Triple rear camera 
• Variable telephoto lens 
• Confusing camera apps require photography experience 

The Xperia phones have long been a contradiction when it comes to cameras, and the trend continues here. 

For one, Sony makes arguably the best smartphone camera sensor in the world right now, in the 1in IMX989, found in phones like the Xiaomi 13 Ultra and Vivo X90 Pro – but you won’t find it here. 

Instead, the main shooter in the Xperia 1 V uses a different, custom sensor – called the Exmor T – cropping a 52Mp sensor slightly to use a 48Mp section of it. 

That’s a big change from the 12Mp main camera last year, and Sony says the upgrade should enable a significant performance jump, especially in low light. 

I’ll be honest: I’m not sold. Shots out of the main camera look great in good light, but that’s true for every high-end phone around right now. 

The 1 V still holds its own in dim but simple lighting – shooting at golden hour or snapping photos of your dinner in a candlelit restaurant, for example.  

But once it gets genuinely dark, quality drops dramatically, and isn’t helped much by the phone’s dedicated night mode – astonishingly, in 2023, the first time Sony has ever offered one. 

Sony makes arguably the best smartphone camera sensor in the world right now – but you won’t find it here

Shots in low light are grainy and lacking detail, and if there’s any light source in frame – a bulb, or the evening sky – you can expect it to be blown out and too bright. The shots I took at an Alvvays concert are among the worst I’ve had from a flagship phone at a gig. 

This is a good camera, but it’s clearly below the level of other phones at this price. 

The company has stuck with 12Mp sensors for the phone’s ultrawide, telephoto, and selfie cameras, all three of which appear to have been lifted directly from the 1 IV.  

The highlight remains the telephoto, which has a variable zoom capable of hitting 3.5x or 5.2x optical zoom – though in practice, those two are so close that you’re unlikely to notice much difference between them. 

It’s great at those optical zoom levels, but detail drops sharply if you push it further, with blurry, soft shots – and loads of noise if you try to use it in low-light, like at a concert. 

The problem lurking behind every lens is the Sony software, which is unnecessarily complicated.  

Your main camera app is called Photography Pro, but contains within it a separate set of pro tools modelled on Sony’s Alpha camera software.  

You can also shoot video in here, but if that doesn’t satisfy there are two separate video apps pre-installed on the phone – Video Pro and Cinema Pro – each modelled on different Sony camera lines. 

The best case scenario would be that having all these apps would simply be a bit confusing – but it’s impossible to escape the feeling that the only way to get the best out of these cameras is to dive into the pro settings and go manual. 

I suspect that a photographer willing to dive into the details could use the 1 V to take shots on a par with a Pixel 7 Pro or Galaxy S23 Ultra, but that’s not how most of us use our phones. If you just want to be able to point and shoot, you’re better off elsewhere. 

Battery & charging 

• Solid day-and-a-bit battery 
• Wired and wireless charging – but slowly 
• No charger included 

Despite the slim frame, the Xperia 1 V packs a surprisingly chunky 5000mAh battery inside. 

Combined with its fairly efficient Snapdragon chipset that easily delivered a full day of battery life in my testing, and a fair few hours the next day too. 

I wouldn’t quite trust the phone to run for a full two days without really stripping back my usage and dropping down the refresh rate or resolution, but as long as you’re happy to charge daily you should be free from battery anxiety. 

Charging can be either wired or wireless, but there are downsides. The first is that Sony is one of the companies that doesn’t ship any charger with its phones any more, so you’ll have to already own a USB-C charger from another device. 

The second is that even the wired charging is limited to fairly sluggish 30W speeds. Testing with one of my own third-party chargers, in the absence of an official Sony one, that was only enough to restore 41% of the battery in half an hour, which is pretty poor by modern standards. 

Software & updates 

• Ships with Android 13 
• Minimal Sony tweaks 
• Likely limited long-term support 

The Xperia 1 V ships with Android 13, the latest version of Google’s operating system at the time of writing.

Sony doesn’t modify the experience as much as many rivals. In fact, it leaves the core OS alone for the most part, focussing on tweaks like extra display quality settings and its ‘Side sense’ shortcut bar, an optional mode that hovers along the edge of the screen with quick access to apps and other functions. 

The best case scenario would be that having all these apps would simply be a bit confusing

Sony does install a fair few of its own apps however. There are the three aforementioned camera apps, a recording app called Music Pro, the Bravia Core film streaming app (don’t worry, you’re not the only one who’s never heard of it), and a couple more besides. Most can’t be uninstalled, though luckily you can punt Bravia Core off the phone. 

Sony hasn’t publicly promised how long it will give software support to the Xperia 1 V, or answered our request for clarification, but we can guess. The 1 IV was promised a paltry two Android versions and three years of security patches, and a repeat of that seems likely. 

That would see the phone receive Android 14 and 15, with its last major Android update coming in late 2024 and security support ending in 2026. That’s fine if you know you’re the type to upgrade often, but not good enough for those who expect a phone to last a good few years. Samsung, Apple, and Google offer at least five years of security support each.

Price & availability 

The Xperia 1 V is out now worldwide. 

It’s expensive, setting you back $1,399/£1,299/€1,399. That’s a price drop for the US at least, where last year’s phone was an exorbitant $1,599, but it’s still right in the upper echelons of smartphone pricing. 

You could pick up any of the Pixel 7 Pro, Galaxy S23 Ultra, or iPhone 14 Pro Max for less than an Xperia, and I would happily recommend any of those phones over this one for almost any buyer. 

Check out our ranking of the best phones for more alternatives. 

Verdict 

Sony has doubled down on its unusual decision to pitch the Xperia 1 series firmly at creatives who already own Sony gear. 

If you shoot with Sony cameras and want a phone with the same feel – and a few specific compatibility features – then you may well love the Xperia 1 V. 

But that doesn’t describe me, and it won’t describe most people. For just about anyone else there’s little reason to pay more for a phone that often delivers less thanks to a complicated camera and slow charging. 

The only real area it excels is its 4K display, but that’s old news now and of limited use – there’s a reason no other phone manufacturer has ever bothered to equal it. 

Sony’s hardware remains as slick as ever, but at this price there’s little reason for most people to put up with the compromises. 

Specs 

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 
• 6.5in 120Hz 4K HDR OLED display 
• 12GB RAM 
• 256/512GB storage 
• Cameras:
  • 48Mp, f/1.9 main camera
  • 12Mp, f/2.2 ultrawide camera
  • 12Mp, f/2.3-2.8 3.5-5x telephoto camera
  • 12Mp, f/2.0 selfie camera
• 30W wired charging 
• 15W wireless charging 
• 5000mAh battery 
• 3.5mm headphone jack 
• Gorilla Glass Victus (rear) and Victus 2 (display)
• IP65/68 
• Black, silver, green 
• Android 13

Best Prices Today: Sony Xperia 1 V