Sony Xperia 10 II review

Stock Android 10, with a hint of Xperia customization

Short of one of Google's own Pixel devices, the modern Xperia UI is about as close as you can get to a clean, vanilla Android 10 experience. Sony somehow managed to tone-down the already clean experience from last year's Xperia 1 and Xperia 5 even further.

Naturally, the Xperia 10 II comes with all the improvements native to Android 10, like the new two-tier location permission and system-wide Dark theme.

Two-tier location permissions and dark theme

Weirdly enough, the Xperia comes out of the box with the old-school three button nav bar for navigation, though it does offer you the option for gesture navigation. The pill-based method that the previous-gen Xperias used and is still available on Pixels is not an option on the Xperia 10 II, though.

Fingerprint unlock is the only biometric unlock method available and since we found that to work flawlessly we're not lamenting the lack of face unlock. Seeing how there's no dedicated face recognition hardware, a face unlock feature would be less secure than the fingerprint reader anyway.

Gesture navigation • gesture sensitivity • security options

Sony has included more than one thoughtful subtle behavioral tweak in the UI. Especially when it comes to making navigation work properly with various apps. For instance, you can tweak basic gesture navigation sensitivity.

On the flip side, there are very few options in terms of visual customization. You get some static wallpapers and watch styles, and that's about it. In case you were wondering - that Live wallpapers menu from the screenshot has no baked-in options available. It is simply there for convenience once you do install standard Android live wallpapers. Thoughtful!

Very few visual styling options

One small complaint we do have is the overly guided Sony way of presenting things. It takes a good few minutes to initially set up the phone and go through all of the tutorials, settings recommendations, and the additional app wizard. Then, every app or menu you visit for the first time typically has its own little tutorial or "tip" to offer. While we appreciate the novice-friendliness of it all, perhaps the whole system can benefit from an initial "Easy" or "Advanced" mode prompt. Just our two cents.

Setup notifications after the initial setup

The UI basics are identical to what you'd get on Google's own phones.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Folder view • App drawer • Task switcher • Quick toggles

There are unique Xperia bits on top, however. One-handed mode, for example, lets you shrink the UI to one corner by double-tapping the home button to bring everything within reach. If you go with gesture navigation instead, there is still a convenient-enough toggle in the Side Sense UI.

One-handed UI

Sony's Side Sense is present as well. A pair of touch-sensitive areas on either side of the phone enable various actions most of which user-configurable. One particularly powerful and customizable option is the 21:9 pair shortcut feature. Through it, you simply select two apps and the relative location you want to launch them in, and then you can trigger split-screen with the pair instantly.

Side Sense

You can freely drag the Side Sense Ui up and down once open, for optimal convenience. You can even get a smaller version of the app drawer, with all of the apps there. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to small, thoughtful tweaks and settings for Side Sense.

Side sense and Multi-window are technically two separate entities, with separate settings. Their UI's, however, are so intertwined that there is hardly any meaningful distinction. By default, Side Sense has a set of quick toggles and a total of 8 app shortcuts, which are dynamically selected based on behavioral monitoring and patterns. Of course, you can add custom app entries yourself, as well.

Add apps to Side Sense

The main setting aspect of the multi-window menu is an interface to set up specific app pairs, for quick launching.

Alternatively, you can evoke Multi-window in several other ways and then just rely on Side Sense suggestions for frequently used app pairs.

Multi-window settings

We really like how Multi-window actually functions in action. You can quickly swap one of the two apps out for a different one, switch them around and adjust the split. The whole system is responsive, and most modern apps play nicely with it.

Multi-window in action

Rounding-off Side Sense, we have a very in-depth set of tweaks and settings available. Everything from position, size, look, and sensitivity can be finely-tuned to your liking. You can customize what double-tap, slide up and slide down on the Side Sense bar do freely and even have the entire thing selectively turned-off on a per-app basis. Side Sense is a very versatile feature.

Side Sense settings

Other than Side Sense, there are a few light Xperia options sprinkled here and there. Most of these housed neatly inside the Xperia Assistant. Battery Care is a particular favorite of ours.

Xperia assistant and various features

And there are a few gestures to customize on a system-wide level as well. Nothing too fancy, but thoughtful-enough to be meaningful on an everyday basis.

Gesture settings

Finally, it is worth noting that Sony retired a few of its in-house apps, as well. Gone is the Album app - Sony's in-house gallery, and with it, the image editor. This functionality has been delegated to the Google Photos app now, and that's hardly an issue. The Music app remains, though with ubiquitous streaming apps taking over from offline playback we think its days are probably numbered too.

Just in case you were wondering, the feature-rich "Game enhancer", as seen on the Xperia 1 II, is not present on our Xperia 10 II review unit.

Synthetic benchmarks

Raw performance is not the strong suit of the Xperia 10 II. While not necessarily bad in any way, the Snapdragon 665 chipset, powering it, simply had the misfortune to be followed-up, quickly by a lot of development and meaningful competition in the midranger silicon space. It is worth remembering that the Xperia 10 II was announced back in February and is only now coming to the market. That places the RnD cycle for it further in the past, still. Hence, in some sense, we can't really fault Sony for its chipset choice.

Starting with GeekBench and some pure-CPU numbers, we can start to illustrate in number just what we mean when we mention development in the mid-range chipset market, with silicon such as the MediaTek Helio P95 and Snapdragon 765G shifting the bar for performance expectations. Granted, the Snapdragon 730 or 730G, which came out alongside the 665 would have probably stood a better chance in such a crowd.

GeekBench 5.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T
  2858
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  2732
• LG G8 ThinQ
  2700
• Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite
  2027
• Motorola Edge
  1862
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  1692
• Oppo Reno3 Pro
  1517
• Sony Xperia 10 II
  1413
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  1394
• Sony Xperia 10
  990

GeekBench 5.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T
  776
• LG G8 ThinQ
  743
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  738
• Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite
  688
• Motorola Edge
  586
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  548
• Oppo Reno3 Pro
  398
• Sony Xperia 10 II
  315
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  311
• Sony Xperia 10
  179

AnTuTu paints the same overall picture. At least we can see that the Xperia 10 II is outscoring other devices with the same Snapdragon 665 chipset. Seeing how AnTuTu is a more compound benchmark, this is a positive sign about more potent internals inside the Xperia 10 II as a whole, as well as proper optimization on Sony's part to make sure they are getting the most out of the chip.

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T
  485585
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  459497
• LG G8 ThinQ
  362730
• Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite
  341212
• Motorola Edge
  305989
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  272229
• Xiaomi Mi Note 10
  256717
• Oppo Reno3 Pro
  227810
• Sony Xperia 10 II
  196545
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  173607
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
  167395
• Sony Xperia 10
  112198

Moving on to GPU figures, we can see the Adreno 610, inside the Snapdragon 665 start to sweat. Even on the lower-intensity OpenGL ES 3.1 test inside GFXBench, we do not see frame rates above the 30 mark. Let alone 60.

Granted, on top of these charts, we have Snapdragon 855+ and 855 ex-flagship devices, skewing the scale, mainly because some of these are now attainable at roughly the Xperia 10 II's price point. If you are after the best possible graphics experience and are willing to live with slightly older hardware, we see no reason not to look in that direction.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T
  112
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  100
• LG G8 ThinQ
  90
• Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite
  79
• Motorola Edge
  50
• Xiaomi Mi Note 10
  41
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  41
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
  20
• Sony Xperia 10 II
  19
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  19
• Sony Xperia 10
  13

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  60
• OnePlus 7T
  59
• Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite
  57
• LG G8 ThinQ
  51
• Motorola Edge
  48
• Xiaomi Mi Note 10
  38
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  37
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  18
• Sony Xperia 10 II
  16
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
  16
• Sony Xperia 10
  11

On-screen numbers are particularly interesting here, mainly to illustrate that the extra tall, or rather extra-wide, depending on how you look at it, resolution on the Xperia 10 II is not doing it any favors.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T
  79
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  69
• LG G8 ThinQ
  65
• Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite
  47
• Motorola Edge
  34
• Xiaomi Mi Note 10
  30
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  30
• Oppo Reno3 Pro
  20
• Sony Xperia 10 II
  13
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
  13
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  13
• Sony Xperia 10
  9.6

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T
  59
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  56
• Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite
  41
• LG G8 ThinQ
  33
• Motorola Edge
  32
• Xiaomi Mi Note 10
  27
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  27
• Oppo Reno3 Pro
  17
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  12
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
  11
• Sony Xperia 10 II
  10
• Sony Xperia 10
  7.8

GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T
  48
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  43
• LG G8 ThinQ
  40
• Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite
  29
• Motorola Edge
  19
• Xiaomi Mi Note 10
  17
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  17
• Oppo Reno3 Pro
  7.3
• Sony Xperia 10 II
  7.1
• Motorola Moto G8 Power
  7.1
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
  7
• Sony Xperia 10
  5.4

Finally, we have some 3D mark numbers for you, as well. It should be noted that these weren't particularly easy to record since the Xperia 10 II ran out of graphical memory and either errored-out or froze on most runs. In much the same fashion, the higher-difficulty Aztec runs within GFXBench never properly finished on the phone either.

3DMark SSE OpenGL ES 3.1 1440p

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T
  6296
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  5641
• LG G8 ThinQ
  5254
• Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite
  4015
• Motorola Edge
  3004
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  2467
• Oppo Reno3 Pro
  1243
• Sony Xperia 10 II
  1125
• Sony Xperia 10
  820

3DMark SSE Vulkan 1440p

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T
  5540
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  4892
• LG G8 ThinQ
  4514
• Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite
  3706
• Motorola Edge
  2801
• Xiaomi Redmi K30
  2244
• Oppo Reno3 Pro
  1551
• Sony Xperia 10 II
  1121
• Sony Xperia 10
  831

The Xperia 10 II is definitely no record-setter and its Snapdragon 665 chipset is hardly a powerhouse by 2020 standards. If you are after raw performance, you can likely get more for the same money elsewhere. Going for one of the newer mid-ranger chips, or, alternatively, one of the price-depreciated flagships from last year.

However, if gaming is not a major priority for you, we can assure you that the Snapdragon 665, as implemented in the Xperia 10 II does a swell job of running everything perfectly smoothly - whether it is web browsing, popular apps or simply general UI interactions.