Sony Xperia 1, 10 Plus, 10, L3 hands-on review

Sony Xperia 10 and 10 Plus hardware and internals

We already mentioned that the most apparent difference between the Xperia 10 Plus and the vanilla Xperia 10 is the display size. Naturally, that difference in size translates to overall dimensions as well: 167 x 73 x 8.3 mm; 180 grams on the Plus and 155 x 68 x 8.4 mm; 162 grams on the Xperia 10.

A smaller chassis generally means less room for battery. In the case of the Xperia 10 - 2,870 mAh. Not that the Xperia 10 Plus is endowed with a particularly large pack itself, rated at 3,000 mAh. Large and power-hungry LCD's plus relatively small battery packs could really spell trouble in terms of battery endurance. But, we'll reserve judgement for the final review. At least Sony equipped the Xperia 10 pair with its Smart STAMINA and Battery Care tech. Hopefully that helps a bit.

The display clearly bore a huge chunk of the cost-saving measures for the step-down Xperia 10 and 10 Plus models. Another somewhat major and frankly expected downgrade, compared to the Xperia 1 is in the chipset department. Instead of the Snapdragon 855, the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus are powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 and Snapdragon 636, respectively.

These two are clearly nowhere near as powerful as the Snapdragon 855, but they are also not created equal between them either. It is worth noting that the Snapdragon 630 has a total of eight Cortex-A53 cores at its disposal (four at 2.2 GHz + four at 1.8 GHz), while the Snapdragon 636 uses a noticeably more powerful Cortex-A73 cluster of four units (four 1.8 GHz Kryo 260 Gold + four 1.6 GHz Kryo 260 Silver). These are custom Qualcomm derivatives as well, as opposed to vanilla ARM cores and are tuned for better power efficiency. We are eager to see how this affects the overall endurance on the Snapdragon 636.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Motorola Moto G7 Plus
  1999
• Nokia 6.1 Plus
  1951
• Nokia 7.1
  1940
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro
  1812
• Sony Xperia 10 Plus (pre)
  1725
• Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra
  1548
• Sony Xperia XA2
  1545
• Motorola Moto G6 Plus
  1525
• Sony Xperia XA2 Plus
  1523
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  1517
• Sony Xperia 10 (pre)
  1411

We'll know how much of a difference that really makes in practice once we get the Sony's in the lab for a full review. On the GPU side of things, we don't really expect that much of a variance, since we have an Adreno 508 going against a 509 model.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia 10 Plus (pre)
  15041
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro
  15025
• Motorola Moto G7 Plus
  15004
• Nokia 7.1
  14963
• Nokia 6.1 Plus
  14903
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  14365
• Motorola Moto G6 Plus
  14357
• Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra
  14328
• Sony Xperia XA2
  14312
• Sony Xperia 10 (pre)
  14156
• Sony Xperia XA2 Plus
  14119

While on the subject of chipsets, moving past CPU performance, as far as connectivity loadout goes, the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus pretty much have identical feature sets. Cat.12 LTE, USB 2.0 Type-C, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, GPS + GLONASS, Bluetooth 5.0 and NFC all present on both. Audio setups appear mostly identical as well: DSEE, LDAC and a Smart Amplifier are all included. Again, quite a few omissions compared to the Xperia 1, but that's the nature of putting together a midranger.

Last, but not least, there are certain differences in memory configuration between the two Xperia 10 variants. The smaller vanilla has 3GB of RAM in its international version and 4GB in China. Its bigger sibling - 4GB worldwide and 6GB in China. At least as per official, even if preliminary info. All models get 64GB of built-in storage, expandable with up to 512GB extra via microSD.

Camera

Sony has a pretty tidy progression going in the camera department. On top of the food chain, naturally, we find the Xperia 1 with its triple camera setup. Right below it, the Xperia 10 Pro has to settle for a pair of snappers - 12MP main and an 8MP additional unit.

The way this is "one better" than the vanilla Xperia 10 is that the second camera is actually a functional one. Specifically, it can do 2x "optical" zoom. It is worth noting, however, that the latter is only limited to stills. If you try to zoom while recording video, you will be able to, but it's going to be up to 5x digital-only zooming.

Xperia 10 Plus camera samples

Xperia 10 Plus telephoto 2x camera samples

The dual camera setup on the regular Xperia 10 is a bit of a downgrade. Its 5MP snapper is for depth sensing and bokeh alone. No zooming here. The main snapper is slightly different as well. Despite having more megapixels it is actually a bit smaller in terms of sensor size. So, the market segmentation is pretty linear and clear-cut.

Xperia 10 camera samples

At least there are no real differences or surprises in the selfie setup. Both phones get a fixed focus 8MP unit. One thing worth noting is the inclusion of Xperia's own SteadyShot EIS for video capture on both the main and selfie cameras. Of course, don't expect anything quite on the level of the Xperia 1's video stabilization, especially now that the main cam has OIS. Still, it's a nice little addition.

Also on the same list of nifty little party tricks is the ability to capture video in 21:9 4K resolution. Sony went the extra mile to do 1644 x 3840 pixels at 30fps on both the Xperia 10 Plus and even the Xperia 10 with its Snapdragon 630 chipset.

Features and Software

There's not really a lot to share regarding software that is radically different from the current Sony Android experience and the Xperia 1 we already described in some detail. Naturally, certain advanced features, like Creator mode for the display and the Cinema Pro cinematography camera app.

On the flip side, Side sense is very much present. It even comes complete with the nifty App pair feature for setting up duos of apps to launch in a pre-defined "top-bottom" split screen view. Or, failing a day-one roll-out, Sony has promised to seed it to user via an OTA shortly.

Both the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus will be available for purchase starting today (February 25) in a number of select markets.