Sony Xperia 10 VI review
Android 14 in a clean Xperia wrapper
In a much-appreciated new move, Sony has upped the software support for its devices and the Xperia 10 VI is expected to receive three major OS updates and four years of security patches.
Sony has always had some of the cleanest OS builds around, and the Xperia 10 VI is no exception. In fact, the clutter is so minimal that you don't even get a full set of Google and Sony apps out of the box. The initial setup wizard advises you to download these from the Google Play Store, but you can easily opt not to.
Compared to last year's Android 13 UI, this time around, Sony moved away from the larger quick toggles in the notification shade and went for more compact square ones. It's definitely a look and not one that we've seen that often. But we can't shake the feeling that it comes off as a bit of a "retro" vibe yet again.
Besides that, you get a standard non-alphabetized app drawer with a search and a horizontal carousel for recent apps, complete with a quick shortcut to enable a multi-window view.
Side sense is one of the few Sony additional features tacked on top of the otherwise vanilla OS. A handle on the side of the phone opens up a menu of shortcuts to apps and features, most of them user-configurable. The 21:9 multi-window pairs can be customized here, but they don't go into the three-pair shortcuts in the regular task switcher. A recent addition to the menu is a widget to control the Sony headphones app - handy if you have a set of those.
There's a fairly standard set of gestures for call handling, as well as a one-handed mode and smart backlight control. In this menu, you'll find the navigation options with the two basic types available - gestures or a navbar.
Similarly to previous generations, the Game Enhancer utility is missing on the Xperia 10 VI. Sony's Music player is on board, and so is Sony's Video Creator app, while Google's Photos and Files are used for gallery and file management purposes.
Benchmarks and performance
After reusing the Snapdragon 695 chipset for two generations of Xperia 10 devices, Sony finally decided to move away from the chip and use the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 instead. That chip is a bit newer and was announced in 2022, but it started popping up in devices in Q1 of 2023. Among other things, it is manufactured on a more efficient and modern Samsung 4nm node.
The CPU setup on board the Xperia 10 VI has two clusters, meaning it is not part of the modern wave of chips with a prime core at the helm. Still, you get four ARM Cortex-A78 cores, clocked at up to 2.2 GHz and another four Cortex-A55 ones, working at up to 1.8 GHz. The onboard GPU is an Adreno 710.
As of writing this review, we are only aware of a single storage version for the Xperia 10 VI - one with 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB of onboard storage. The results in the storage benchmarks we tried suggest the phone is using UFS 3.1 storage chips.
Let's jump into some benchmarks, starting with CPU runs and GeekBench. The Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 does decently well in all-core test scenarios, placing around the middle of the pack of selected competitors. You can expect performance similar to the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2, the Exynos 1380 and the Dimensity 7200 Ultra. That being said, you can get much better performance in the price range.
GeekBench 6
- Multi-core
- Single-core
Poco X6 Pro
Galaxy A55
Poco X6
Galaxy A35
Honor 90
Xperia 10 VI
Redmi Note 13 Pro 5G
Also, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 inside the Xperia 10 VI does quite poorly in single-core CPU testing, which is important for most general phone responsiveness.
AnTuTu is a much more compound benchmark with GPU runs and memory tests. The Xperia 10 VI doesn't do particularly well in this benchmark.
AnTuTu
- v9
- v10
Poco F5
Poco X6
Redmi Note 13 Pro 5G
Galaxy A35
Motorola Edge 40 Neo
Xperia 10 VI
Galaxy A25
Finally, we have 3DMark, which places the Xperia 10 VI decently, but again, it is towards the bottom of the chart. You can get a lot better graphical performance in the price range.
3DMark (offscreen)
- Wild Life (1440p)
- Wild Life Extreme (2160p)
Poco X6 Pro
Redmi Note 13 Pro 5G
Poco X6
Galaxy A35
Motorola Edge 40 Neo
Xperia 10 VI
Galaxy A25
We've discontinued GFXBench graphics benchmarking as the app is often banned/blacklisted on the phones we receive for review. The graphics performance ranking in 3D Mark is just as meaningful, so we suggest you refer to that one instead.
Thermal-throttling
The Xperia 10 VI handles heat pretty well. It retained a large chunk of its performance even after a full hour of torture testing with no jarring drops and stutters in the process. The phone's surface does get quite toasty but never too hot to hold.
Thermal-throttling
Reader comments
- Spyker
- 10 Sep 2024
- RxE
As usual, all Xperia 10 phones have mediocre camera lens. But I'm brand loyal & have been using SONY phones since they were still "SONY ERICSSON". IMO, the main reason why SONY phones now are still the best in reliability is bec...
- Anonymous
- 09 Aug 2024
- nSW
notebookcheck review much more detailed.
- Anonymous
- 06 Aug 2024
- 0Uc
It's 2024...