Sony Xperia 1 IV review

Android 12, familiar Xperia UI

The Sony Xperia 1 IV may be booting Android 12, but it is like any other recent Xperia when it comes to UI. And like any other, it's got a very stock Android feel, though there are in-house bits if you look deep enough.

Starting with some of the basics, there's an always-on display feature (AOD) that goes by Google's Ambient display name and has a fairly limited set of customization options. The lockscreen is business as usual with a clock (that you can customize), a shortcut to the camera and another one for Google Assistant.

Always on display • Lockscreen

The homescreen, too, is as standard as they come. The Google feed is the leftmost pane, but you can disable it if it's not your thing. The quick toggles/notification area is Google's stock too. With this version of Android, you get Notification history and the Bubbles shortcuts as part of the Conversations features - both available on the Xperia, unlike some more heavily customized UIs.

Homescreen • Folder view • App drawer • Notification shade • Quick toggles • Notification settings

This brings us to one of the Sony exclusives, which deserves a mention even though it's not new - Multi-window switch. You can access it from the task switcher or from the dedicated shortcut icon on the homescreen, and you get sort of like two stacked task switcher rolodexes with your currently opened apps to pick one for the top half and one for the bottom half of the screen. The rightmost pane in each half lets you launch another app, not just pick from the already running ones.

The phone remembers three previously used pairs so you can access them directly, though we couldn't find a way to save custom app pair presets. It's worth mentioning that the window split can be done in almost any arbitrary ratio, not just 50/50.

Task switcher • Multi-window switcher

Side sense is another of the in-house Sony features. 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.

Side sense

There's a fairly standard set of gestures for call handling, as well as a one-handed mode and smart backlight control. It's in this menu that you'll find the navigation options with the two basic types available - gestures or a navbar.

Gesture settings

Pros can enjoy the occasional game too, so the Xperia Pro-I has Sony's Game Enhancer as part of its software package. It's a comprehensive utility with two main interfaces - a game hub/launcher, and an overlay you pull out from the side while in a game.

Game Enhancer

Performance profiles (or Game Mode) can be set on a per-game basis, and it's in here that you get to set the screen refresh rate and lock it at 120Hz regardless of whether the game supports it (though, obviously, it would make sense on the games that do). Additional sliders let you select Touch response speed and touch tracking accuracy.

Game Enhancer

There is also a 240Hz setting, which inserts a black frame between each 120Hz frame. This reduces the blur and Sony recommends using this option in games that support 120fps.

There is also H.S. power control - a setting that deals with power management. When the feature is enabled (look for it in Settings while in-game), and the phone is plugged in, it won't actually charge the battery but will only essentially meet your current power consumption so as to avoid unnecessary heat generation - H.S. stands for Heat Suppression.

Game Enhancer H.S. Power Control

The Focus settings is an array of toggles that let you disable pesky notifications, turn off adaptive brightness, disable the camera button and the side sense functionality - limit distractions.

There are also screenshot and video capture features.

The phone uses Google's own Photos and Files for gallery and file management purposes. It does come with Sony's own Music player, though.

There are also two new paid services that are absent on our pre-production unit - Bravia Core and Music Pro.

Bravia Core has been exclusive to Bravia TVs up until this Xperia model. It offers a rich Sony Classics movie catalog and you can also watch a few of the blockbuster titles for free on a trial basis. The service offers movies up to 4K60 quality and some titles even have MAX enhanced audio. And the best part is that you get 1-year free access to Bravia Core with your new Xperia 1 IV.

Music Pro is another paid service that allows you to record singing and instruments and upload this recording to the cloud for processing. The audio will then get processed as if you've used a high-quality condenser mic in the acoustic environment of a professional studio.

Performance and benchmarks

The Sony Xperia 1 IV runs on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, one of the notable hardware updates since the Xperia 1 III and Xperia Pro-I. It is one in a long line of SD8G1 devices that we've already reviewed and tested, so performance isn't going to be a surprise.

The Xperia 1 IV has the most powerful Android processor and it's up to thermal handling here to determine which phone handles it best.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi 12 Pro
  3682
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  3657
• Sony Xperia Pro-I
  3540
• Sony Xperia 1 III
  3515
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  3447
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  3433
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  3403
• Google Pixel 6
  2899
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  2831

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  1180
• Xiaomi 12 Pro
  1169
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  1160
• Sony Xperia 1 III
  1130
• Sony Xperia Pro-I
  1129
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  1042
• Google Pixel 6
  1030
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  1002
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  975

Same goes for the Adreno 730 GPU - among the current best mobile GPUs and it all boils down to which phone has it cooled in the most efficient way.

Note that the Xperia 1 IV renders onscreen benchmarks in 1096p instead of 1644p.

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  74
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1080p)
  69
• Google Pixel 6
  57
• Sony Xperia 1 III
  54
• Sony Xperia Pro-I
  51
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  48
• Xiaomi 12 Pro
  46
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  44
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  39
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  37

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 10 Pro
  97
• Xiaomi 12 Pro
  96
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  94
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  79
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  76
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1080p)
  76
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  70
• Sony Xperia Pro-I
  69
• Sony Xperia 1 III
  68
• Google Pixel 6
  66

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  9794
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  9758
• Xiaomi 12 Pro
  9664
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  9610
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  7437
• Google Pixel 6
  6832
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  6602
• Sony Xperia 1 III
  5807
• Sony Xperia Pro-I
  5753

AnTuTu also puts the Xperia 1 IV among the best-scoring phones, on par with the OnePlus 10 Pro.

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  1012896
• Xiaomi 12 Pro
  985226
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  968359
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1080p)
  940400
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  886248
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  838832
• Sony Xperia 1 III
  749132
• Sony Xperia Pro-I
  725839
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  719815
• Google Pixel 6
  676831

Obviously, the Xperia 1 IV has the best chipset in the world, coupled with one of the most impressive displays there is right now.

Let's talk about thermals now. The good news is that the Xperia 1 IV never gets uncomfortably hot. And that is because it throttles heavily.

The Xperia 1 IV managed to keep 63% of its maximum CPU performance when running at peak processor performance for an hour. The phone throttled in the first 5 minutes down to about 65% and kept this limitation until the end of the 1 hour test.

The GPU stability is worse. The Xperia 1 IV scored 47% graphics stability - its GPU performance is halved after 10 minutes of peak performance.

CPU test • GPU test

We also noticed that the screen often dropped the refresh rate down to 60Hz when playing games or switching between apps, something we've rarely seen on other phones. And it's written in the fine print, indeed (the photo below).

The camera may and will heat up the phone, too, but it has more leeway. The phone displays this icon and will keep shooting for a long time. If it's hot outside, though, it may overheat and kill services, or even the camera app. It did not happen to us, though.

Camera warning

Long story short, the Xperia 1 IV is a powerful phone, but it throttles quite fast after half an hour of gaming. Of course, it is so powerful that you won't probably notice this now, but it may get annoying down the road eventually.

Disclaimer: This review is based on a pre-release unit that isn't running on the retail firmware version. There is a good change the throttling issues improve with the final firmware version.