Sony Xperia 1 VII review

13 May 2025


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  • Donnie
  • Rxx
  • 14 May 2025

GSMArena, could you please verify the accuracy of the battery life results? Is this discrepancy attributable to unoptimised software (a lack of ongoing optimisation efforts by Sony)?

From my observations of other phones featuring the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, they have demonstrated superior battery life compared to the previous generation, the Snapdragon 8 Gen-3. However, in Sony’s case, the battery life is inferior in all aspects when compared to the Xperia 1 Mark VI.

    Anonymous, 13 May 2025fair, but its mostly from a perspective of "if youre g... morekinda makes sense but they really need to add some other cooler features instead of this as it'll be a waste i think.

      Moi, 13 May 2025I got the Xperia vi and it is the most complete smartphone ... morePrecisely my use case. I would add exceptional battery, uninterrupted and well calibrated display, great front firing speakers, and superb pocketability.

        • ?
        • Anonymous
        • yZR
        • 14 May 2025

        The Xperia used to be my dream phone. Amazing cameras, amazing battery life, microSD slot, etc. Just really expensive though.

        Then... they just didn't get much better for 4 generations while everyone else advanced by leaps and bounds. Sony doesn't even want to use their own best sensors for their own phones.

        Now they are pretty average and still super expensive. I definitely prefer phones with microSD slots but I'm definitely not paying double the price for that.

          Very nice!
          I own a Xperia 1 VI, so I will skip the VII but no doubt I'll keep my eye on Sony 🙂
          Nice to hear my 1 VI has slightly better speakers and battery life tough 😁

            Anonymous, 14 May 2025What wrong with Xperia picture quality? I always wanted to ... moreXperia's main camera is not bad but it's not the best either - Details sometimes look a bit mushy even though traces of sharpening are still visible under many circumstances. In the past Xperia used to suffer from inconsistent HDR trigger, but now they seem to be overdoing their post processing.

            With that said, their telephoto camera, on the other hand, is terrible for the asking price. There's nothing really good about it apart from the fact that it has a stepless optical zoom and a very close minimum focusing distance (The latter is totally hampered by a small aperture lens, primitive image processing and the lack of AF in macro mode).

              Anonymous, 14 May 2025vivo X200 main camera is HDR puke on a sunny day outdoors, ... moreX200 series has Zeiss Natural mode for more neutral colour rendition and Zeiss Texture if you prefer higher contrast. Both modes tone down saturation quite a bit and go a lot easier on sharpening than the default Zeiss Vivid mode as well.

              X200 Ultra allows you to fine-tune post-processing manually and force the camera to use your settings in auto mode, so you can dial down saturation and sharpening as much as you like.
              https://x.com/SPinfoJP/status/1921161956255322527/photo/1


              "...lets highlights blowout on purpose and renders images very naturally, it is very similar to Xperia in terms of mood"

              No they are not similar lol. Xperia 1 VII actually goes very aggressive with HDR and tonemapping to the point where you can clearly see thick halos around contrasting edges. I'm not saying that Vivo and Xiaomi are completely immune to this issue, but Xperia fares a lot worse here and unlike the other two Xperia has no alternative processing mode to mitigate this issue. Not to mention, it seems to be applying an absurd amount of sharpening to some edges, as you can see in the image below where you see a black border around the pillar.

              https://imgur.com/a/k7CCpHd
              https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/reviews/25/sony-xperia-1-vii/rev13/camera/gsmarena_1107.jpg

              "Natural", yeah right lmfao.

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                • Anonymous
                • Yet
                • 14 May 2025

                Nick Tegrataker, 13 May 2025"Main camera on 1V, 1VI and 1VII is up to par with any... morevivo X200 main camera is HDR puke on a sunny day outdoors, it fails miserably with its over the top HDR tone mapping and silly oversharpening. Its also way too amber like Huawei P20 back in the day. Where it shines is indoors and indoors low-light, but that's the trade off. Xiaomi 15 Ultra on the other hand even lets highlights blowout on purpose and renders images very naturally, it is very similar to Xperia in terms of mood.

                  The best phone in the world as of the time of writing this comment.

                    • U
                    • Ultimo
                    • Pyn
                    • 14 May 2025

                    Anonymous, 14 May 2025What wrong with Xperia picture quality? I always wanted to ... moreThere is nothing wrong

                      Ive got a Xperia VI for gaming and multimedia on release because of:

                      - no notch/punchhole blocking my view/ui all the time
                      - audiophile front facing speakers so I have nice clean direct sound and dont have to always care that i dont block the speaker with my right index finger
                      - top notch SoC and enough RAM

                      what is this weird "upgrade"?

                      - 100€ price increase
                      - SoC thermal throttles now down to 50%
                      - worse battery life

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                        • Anonymous
                        • Yet
                        • 14 May 2025

                        Shamrock Sean, 13 May 2025They make best sensors but they can't get processing r... moreWhat wrong with Xperia picture quality? I always wanted to know that. People keep saying it's bad but they never say whats actually bad about it.

                          • W
                          • Wami
                          • 8n9
                          • 14 May 2025

                          Sony don't care about:
                          - Heat management for stability
                          - Software side for bug free experience
                          - Telephoto lens sensor size
                          - Battery capacity increment
                          That's why people don't buy Xperia over Vivo

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                            • Anonymous
                            • Yet
                            • 14 May 2025

                            Gila, 13 May 2025Sony why your phone always throttle bad cooling board on re... moreFirst of all you shouldn't be even filming in 60fps unless you have a proper camera. Now you gonna ask me why. Second there is nothing worth recording for 8 hours straight. Just get IP camera instead.

                              WhatMatters, 13 May 2025When Samsung launched S25U, it upgraded the ultra wide came... moreThe S24U was already a good phone, and the S25U built on top of that.

                              The Xperia 1 VI needed some improvement (especially with the 'unique' for the worse telephoto and the battery life... decreased.

                                Anonymous, 14 May 2025Wow, those bezels. Those were all the rave in 2018 maybe.There is no need for Sony devices to look like every other mainstream phone out there, and these are really not *the* problem of this generation. Sony could've skipped an Xperia 1 phone this year and not much would change, there's not much (if any) relevant improvement over the 6th generation.

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                                  • Anonymous
                                  • Yet
                                  • 14 May 2025

                                  Tester, 13 May 2025No, the global standard is 330ppi, please don't declar... more330dpi is not a a standard for anything. You mixed it up with print 300dpi which has nothing to do with pixels let alone AMOLED pixels that have sparse subpixels which makes those pixels huge in the first place compared to RGB LCD

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                                    • Anonymous
                                    • Km}
                                    • 14 May 2025

                                    Wow, those bezels. Those were all the rave in 2018 maybe.

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                                      • gs88
                                      • 0rf
                                      • 14 May 2025

                                      Why didn't they upgrade also the periscope? 1/1.95" with 3 to 6x zoom or so?

                                      My hopes for the Walkman-part were kinda high, expected a quad-dac like solution actually. But I'm happy that they finally did something with the upgrade-policy!

                                        • ?
                                        • Anonymous
                                        • bas
                                        • 13 May 2025

                                        Anonymous, 13 May 2025we are in 2025 and most people still haven't understoo... moreYeah, because nothing is more convenient than having to take out a card that has a HIGH LIKELYHOOD of corrupting while also losing your network from removing the SIM card, while also potentially damaging the thin contacts that connect the phone, in the hopes that the other device you're backing up into actually accepts the microSD and doesn't want to format. God, forbid you need to use the internet which is automatically included with most contracts and rarely nowadays loses signal, and is practically able to be used by any device. Hell, even my GoogleTV can connect to my cloud and play videos whenever I want.
                                        Inb4; "just keep your microSD card permanently in your phone, completely defeating the purpose of sharing media to other devices." inb4inb4; "just connect the phone via usb and write to the card from there." Again, that defeats the purpose of having movable, manageable storage, let alone you're relying on android's capability of having stable read/write of potentially hundreds of gigabytes of data, and also hoping that whatever usb device you're connecting to accepts it.

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