Sony Xperia 1 III review

05 July 2021


Sort by:

Dometalican, 05 Jul 2021That battery life...saddens me. I'm sure dark theme an... moreI mean, in that case you can just buy Xperia 5 III with clearly better battery life. If you're willing to let go that "4K" display that operates at 1080 most of the time, then the trade off will be worth it.

    • ?
    • Anonymous
    • 70d
    • 06 Jul 2021

    786, 06 Jul 2021Sony is premium, not like others According to the review, it's not premium at all. It's just overpriced. It's a mediocre flagship phone.

      786, 06 Jul 2021Overpriced. What world do you live in? It's a Sony ... more"Why compromise"
      Me: *Looks at display, battery, performance, camera sections of the review
      Me: Uhh..

        786, 06 Jul 2021That's crappie stock camera. Use the pro app feature,... moreTell me how using a different camera app could fix the lens quality or any of the issues that I mentioned lmfao.

          • ?
          • Anonymous
          • vjX
          • 06 Jul 2021

          786, 06 Jul 2021That's crappie stock camera. Use the pro app feature,... moreHardware issue cannot be fixed by software.

            • ?
            • Anonymous
            • iF4
            • 06 Jul 2021

            786, 06 Jul 2021Overpriced. What world do you live in? It's a Sony ... moreOverpriced, yes. This phone does not beat rivaling devices in most areas; display, battery and charging, SoC is poorly cooled (sure, it's not the best chip by design to begin with - but other brands have managed to cool it more efficiently), even the fingerprint scanner is mediocre. Camera also fails to deliver, no matter how hard you try to hype and twist the truth. They are asking a very high price for no real reason, and you get a more wholesome package for cheaper. This phone really is a very hard sell.

              • 7
              • 786
              • mHh
              • 06 Jul 2021

              Anonymous, 06 Jul 2021And you forgot something, all that for HI PRICESony is premium, not like others

                • 7
                • 786
                • mHh
                • 06 Jul 2021

                Anonymous, 06 Jul 2021I stopped reading once I saw the pathetic battery life of t... moreOverpriced. What world do you live in?

                It's a Sony

                Like no other
                Make and believe
                Why compromise

                Tall screen when multitasking is great.


                What do you even know about sony history.
                Look it up.

                  • 7
                  • 786
                  • mHh
                  • 06 Jul 2021

                  Nick Tegrataker, 06 Jul 2021Despite being the main selling point of the phone, looking ... moreThat's crappie stock camera. Use the pro app feature, it destroy any phone even till 2 years ahead.

                    • ?
                    • Anonymous
                    • nHA
                    • 06 Jul 2021

                    I stopped reading once I saw the pathetic battery life of this overpriced TV remote control.

                      • 7
                      • 786
                      • mHh
                      • 06 Jul 2021

                      Shadocx, 06 Jul 2021So:-they put a 6.5" 4k display on the phone instead of... moreDon't worry, since you ain't buying it, the next firmwa6update will resolve it.

                        • ?
                        • Anonymous
                        • iF4
                        • 06 Jul 2021

                        Seems like they wanted this phone to be a corded one, and designed it only for indoor use... Yet they priced this like it was a high-end mobile phone.

                          Despite being the main selling point of the phone, looking through the samples I found the camera(s) to be surprisingly disappointing. While colours and tonality are handled nicely in typical Sony's fashion, the details are.. atrocious? Like how the heck can it be this bad? The processing is a usual Xperia style (Moderate amount of sharpening in all lighting conditions, noticeable smearing in low light), but the lens quality is so laughably bad this year that it fails to maintain the sharpness even near the centre.

                          When I looked at X60 Pro+'s samples I thought the lens was poor quality, and yet this one managed to go up another notch and made it even worse. And this is not only the main lens, it's awful at all 4 focal lengths (UWA is more excusable, but still poor compared to BBK, Xiaomi and Huawei), and gets progressively worse as you zoom in further! The 2.9x shots aren't great and 4.4x shots are simply too awful to pixel peep. Like what the actual ***, are they seriously asking $1300 for THIS?

                          Low light photos could've been good but many of the shots were ruined by the lens issue IMO. Portrait mode is equally problematic at any focal length because the the tele lens isn't good enough to resolve facial patterns sufficiently in the first place and HDR is completely disabled. Oversharpened selfies hurt my eyes. Videos have very pleasing colours but again I've seen some comparisons on YT showing prominent highlight clipping in backlit scenes.

                          Niche features like capturing human/animal subjects and an extensive manual control have been always Xperia's strong suit, but when other manufacturers are already making an attempt to catch up with Sony in those areas as well - Vivo now has Eye AF, Oppo and Google developed their respective methods to deal with fast moving objects, and Xiaomi's pro mode is getting more feature rich - Sony really needs to do better in basics.

                            Welp, this thing turned out to be a bit lacklustre, didn't it..

                            - First of all, I really like the fact that Sony kept a MicroSD card slot as well as a headphone jack. I simply can't emphasise enough how stupid the current trend is for dropping the support on those two features. Sure, some flagships come with 512GB storage options or even 1TB, and yes many still bundle a decent pair of wireless earphones for pre-order bonuses, they shouldn't be doing that just so that they can skimp out on them. It's a stupid trend created by Apple and I appreciate that Sony admit their mistakes and brought back a jack on their phones.

                            - Display gains 120Hz refresh rate, but honestly, it's not on par with what Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus and Oppo offer on their respective flagships. It's still mindbogglingly dim (Below-600 nits brightness in 2021? Is Sony out of their mind?), isn't based on LTPO technology and doesn't support variable refresh rate. So far its only saving grace is its high 1644p resolution, which is quite hard to notice the difference from 1440p on a small mobile phone screen to begin with - that's it. The colour accuracy remains unknown for whatever the reason GSMArena had, but I must say it's looking pretty underwhelming right now.

                            -Poor battery life thanks to its very pixel-dense display, and one of the slowest charging speed for a 2021 Android flagship. Look, it's really great to see those battery care features (including HS Power Control which I would love to have on my next phone), but their effectiveness is reduced significantly if you have to charge your phone more often because frequent recharging degrades a battery faster. I bet Xperia 5 III will fare much better in this regard just like what we saw in Mk. II.

                            - Below average CPU performance + overheating (though it's a bit hard to blame Sony for the latter since SD888 is a literal toaster). Here Sony could've done a better job, too.

                            - Innovative yet subpar cameras, I'll write more on this in detail in the next post.

                            Sony made a right decision for including WF-1000XM3 earbuds in some of the markets, because there's no way that I would shill out $1300 for this. Xperia 5 III feels like much better deal, that 4K display simply isn't worth it for me.

                              • H
                              • Hildr
                              • pnK
                              • 06 Jul 2021

                              Just to weight the 4k/120Hz things a little, Xperia I mark I and II already weren't rendering 4K most of the time, only a handful of app were able to do so.
                              That said, there are still 4k screen with the upscaling working great, so that's not like a 2K screen either, especially with the pentyle screen that tends to blur edges.
                              So that's not like it is a compromise that change anything anyway. Game run at FHD or 2K max upscaled to 4k and displayed at 120Hz, that's what was asked, since the game app itself can't render 4k (even VLC doesn't render 4k!).

                              Also about the dim screen it's to not burn the screen as quick as competitor, since they have in mind their user keep their phone for more than 2 years. That said, it's also highly frustrating to have a dim screen like this so, while the idea is understandable, in practice it's really not practical especially to take photo/video with said pro/cinema mode but not seeing anything on the screen because it's sunny.

                              I guess I'll keep my mark I for another year anyway =D

                                • y
                                • ying zoe
                                • ftR
                                • 06 Jul 2021

                                blue.sun, 06 Jul 2021No matter what you write, Somy fans are so blind...you mean lf fans

                                  • C
                                  • Chip
                                  • AZY
                                  • 06 Jul 2021

                                  ItJustAintGood, 06 Jul 2021It's a stupid phone. But Sony fanboys will still like... moreFruit fans are unmatched. They buy tents just to be first in line to get the latest "marvel".

                                    • ?
                                    • Anonymous
                                    • kuM
                                    • 06 Jul 2021

                                    blue.sun, 06 Jul 2021No matter what you write, Somy fans are so blind...What fanboys? Sony been underdog for a long time.

                                      I was really looking forward to the 1 III, even though it is almost too late for that SoC. Unfortunately, the display brightness and battery life cannot compete with the S21 series 😞

                                      Thank you so much for the great Review!! 😊

                                        Dude, Sony always focuses on increasing battery life.... no "ultrawarp speed charge" and that very slow 90-100% charging rate...

                                        That´s the reason you can use today a XZ Premium with the original battery at almost full power...

                                          28 of 35