Sony Xperia 1 VI review

15 May 2024


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Anonymous, 16 May 2024Dear, market above $700 in Japan is basically iphone and xp... moreIn 2023 Xiaomi was coming up from behind Sony in terms of the number of shipped units in Japan, so Sony somehow "not caring" about Xiaomi is a laughable statement at best, disingenuous at worst.

https://news.mynavi.jp/article/20240515-2946430/

Use Google Translate on the article text and charts - you may find it pretty interesting, including the part where any one of Google, Sharp and Samsung have shipped more units than Sony and Xiaomi combined.

This is the first year that Xiaomi released their highest-end flagship in Japan, so let's see how the high-end segment of the market will shift its shape as the competition gets tougher in coming years. I'm guessing they will grow like Huawei which had been doing very well in the Japanese market before the ban kicked in.

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    • Anonymous
    • 0p}
    • 16 May 2024

    Nick Tegrataker, 16 May 2024- So starting from the good part - Our battery life king is... moreDear, market above $700 in Japan is basically iphone and xperia every year.
    Only this time galaxy S is doing better.

    They dont care about chinese phones. And people that cant afford flagships buy pixel 7a, galaxy A1x series or any from sharp.
    Not even crapmi note has chance there, since most can afford iphones, the phone all crapmi note users dream of.

    If Apple had something simple like Motorola G14/24, then their share in India for example would be 100%.

    People in China choose to pay way more on crap p70 series instead of much cheaper xiaomi mi or vivo x, imagine outside China

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      • Anonymous
      • 0p}
      • 16 May 2024

      https://m.weibo.cn/detail/5034399676240015

      By the way, there is 16/512 for Japan.
      Red is for Japan, HK and Taiwan.

      No 1vi in China/USA

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        • Anonymous
        • S31
        • 16 May 2024

        Pumpino, 15 May 2024Awesome photos, speakers and battery life, with four years ... moreWait for Black Friday

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          • Anonymous
          • 0p}
          • 16 May 2024

          Post on weibo by Zack Zhang shows it has delta rbg of 0.58

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            • Nick
            • SiK
            • 16 May 2024

            Perhaps the only flagship phone with an expandable micro SD card slot. Go gratulations to Sony!!

              - So starting from the good part - Our battery life king is back. Over 17 hours of battery runtime is very good even when taking the low resolution into account (Zenfone 11 Ultra only lasted 16.5h in the same test), and we're seeing good old Xperia that lasts 2 days of normal usage without any issue.

              - The display brightness is a lot higher and no longer the main drawback of the Xperia series. Now it's truly disappointing that GSMArena no longer conducts the display colour measurement or the studio image comparison on review units - We're here for the technical dives that no one else is doing, yet they are stripping these good bits of their reviews away to make them easier to read. It's kind of like how Anandtech completely fell apart after Andrew F. left the scene, and it's really sad to see GSMArena following the same path.

              - Performance is where we see why the battery life on this phone may be *this* good - It's slower than its 8g3 peers by a significant margin, and the CPU throttles harder AND much quicker than its rivals. GPU stability isn't amazing either as it's comparable to already-pretty-bad S24 Ultra, except S24U's GPU stress test graph looks a lot more stable with less performance spikes and at least it fares a lot better than Xperia in the CPU test. I must say, this is a pretty bad showing from Sony.

              - I'm feeling mostly positive about the new camera system. First of all the app itself looks significantly more modern and user-friendly, the night mode is a lot quicker without having the image quality getting impacted, and the colour & detail rendition from the main camera is just as good as Mark V's.

              - Photos coming out of its telephoto camera looks decent during the day (less sharpening than Mark V, yay) but we see why Sony applies the most aggressive processing at 3.5-7x - The contrast of this lens is very low, as showcased by its very hazy 4K video screenshot. Now we know why they kept the 12MP resolution on this camera rather than going 48 or 50MP. Its low-light photos are undeniably lacklustre though, as they get quickly run over by noise and seem to suffer from AF failure too.

              - The 2x crop zoom seems unchanged from Xperia 5 V, so it's OK but not the best, but the 48MP mode looks surprisingly wonderful. In fact it's more detailed and artifact-y than the 2x shot when you compare them side by side. I'm guessing the camera is running more complex demosaicing algorithms to extract more details out of its Quad Bayer CFA in a dedicated 48MP mode, which is something iPhone 15 Pro also does, funnily enough.

              - Decent outputs from the telemacro mode but I don't understand the point of the 360mm digital zoom option. The sensor is still 12MP and not 50 or 200MP, so you won't get any more details out of it anyway.

              - Portrait mode still doesn't use HDR stacking so the skin gets burnt easily (Come on, this is 2024), and the depth estimation is mediocre. Not a feature I would like to use extensively on this phone.

              - It's sad to see this review not including any info regarding how S-Cinetone changes the appearance of the scene in a video mode - It's my go-to picture profile on my a7IV and handles complex lighting far better than any of the Creative Look modes thanks to much gentler tone curve and slightly undersaturated colours, and the best part is that it looks very nice right out of the box even if you don't colour-grade it. Lower the black gamma level and it would look great for photos too, although I'm not sure Xperia's simplified camera app allows you to use it when shooting photos.

              - Sony is facing unusual competition in its home country, Japan, as Xiaomi emerges strongly with the 14 Ultra which is 20000 yen (130 USD equivalent) cheaper than this Xperia at the same 16GB + 512GB configuration, and if you pre-order it it comes with a free photography kit too. Hopefully GSMArena will write an article about a camera comparison between Xperia 1 VI and the highest-end phones from Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and probably Huawei just for fun. It would be an epic showdown for sure.

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                • Anonymous
                • 0p}
                • 16 May 2024

                Well done. Now people cannot watch any content without black bars.
                Copying negative point of other gonna just make sony lose money.

                Curious to know the next negative reserved for mark 7. Tool to open sim tray? Speaker beside usb port? UI that looks like iOS? Hole on screen to ruin watching videos experience?

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                  • Anonymous
                  • S15
                  • 16 May 2024

                  It's sad that Sony is downshift display aspect ratio from superb 21:9 to 19.5:9 like others do and lost it's uniqness and perfection also with downsize 4k resolution to fhd...Bad decision,really...

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                    • Anonymous
                    • 6kH
                    • 16 May 2024

                    So they downgrade from unique 4k to stupid 1080p that you can have in entry level smartphones because they increased os updated from two to 3.
                    Even apple can't do sh*t like them.
                    They are limited full power potential of chip to make more battery and still suistained performance is awfull.
                    Gsmarena team why downgrading from 4k to 1080p is not in Cons?
                    Which device at this price has 1080p?
                    4.5 score is high it's like fans of son written this review

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                      • Anonymous
                      • pw0
                      • 16 May 2024

                      no 240fps HD ?

                        Eno2, 15 May 2024We got the review in the same day as the official launch, n... moreIt does apply to many brands. Xiaomi, Honor (for their flagships), Oneplus, and Samsung also have this situation for many phones. They all have reviewscoming out on gsmarena immediately after launch. This depends on the manufacturers and their instructions to gsmarena to a large extent. Some brands also have curfews for certain phones so the reviews come out straight after the curfew. Some phones though will be given lower priority alright. The less popular brands in their reviews will often be given less weight

                          Anonymous, 15 May 2024The reviewers can express their own opinion, but I can spea... moreFor my left hand I use my index finger which works pretty fine if I can't use my right

                            Crackling Doom, 15 May 2024Since when is 4.5/5 not an "excellent" score? Good point. The best score for this year's android flagships is the s24 ultra and that's 4.6. Followed by the Xiaomi 14 ultra, Honor magic 6 pro, OPPO find x7 ultra and Vivo x100 pro all of which get 4.5. Therefore the overall score is in joint second place for the current generation of flagships

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                              • Anonymous
                              • 0p}
                              • 15 May 2024

                              Dometalican, 15 May 2024No Gen 4 SoC...? What...?Do not bother. Some ppl here think that by may/june , the current SoC is "outdated".
                              They want OEMs to throw these chips away, redesign motherboard (necessary to use different SoC) and wait until october/november to sell with upcoming SoC, ignoring the fact brands would not have anything to sell during entire 1st semester.

                                Size of tele sensor is too funny, but zoom is good at least.
                                No hi res uw or tele, also no raws of hi res main camera if I see right, their hi res mode with detail resolving is promising.
                                Great to see many improvements, but I can't shake feeling sony always stay behind features of the likes of samsung.

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                                  • Anonymous
                                  • 0p}
                                  • 15 May 2024

                                  AcademicBarzo, 15 May 2024Well, underwhelming is an understatement. Some positiv... moreIt is up to amdroid 17, after that 12 months of patches.
                                  Xperia flagship gets monthly patches.
                                  Even Ace III, low end from 2022 has android 14.

                                  Easy, stop buying phones at carriers. Then you can have monthly patches.

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                                    • Anonymous
                                    • dMG
                                    • 15 May 2024

                                    Can somebody please confirm if face unlock is still missing for this iteration. I'm interested in the phone but NGL I'm way too used to having it on my phone and can't see myself going back to fingerprint only, a not very conveniently placed side one at that.

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                                      • Anonymous
                                      • 0p}
                                      • 15 May 2024

                                      Darth Caesium, 15 May 2024That battery life and the telephoto macro are both extremel... moreWhy do you keep doing this?

                                      You are pretty aware you cannot have second front speaker with 1.5-2.0mm bezel.
                                      You have been told before, more than once.
                                      Speaker has to share space with screen connectors and usb port.
                                      If it was possible, then Asus ROG would still have it. Instead of beside usb connector.
                                      Same reason Pixel 4 could not keep it.

                                      ⚠️⚠️⚠️ IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE DUAL FRONT SPEAKERS WITH MEIZU 16 SERIES DESIGN. NOR S24 DESIGN !! ⚠️⚠️⚠️

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                                        • Anonymous
                                        • 0p}
                                        • 15 May 2024

                                        Anton .el PAPI., 15 May 2024There is no information about the UFS storage type! I woul... moreIf gsmarena wanted you to know, they would post results of reading/writing speeds users can check.

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