Sony Xperia 1 VI review

Android 14 and Xperia UI

As expected, the Xperia 1 VI runs on the latest Android 14 out of the box with Sony's own take on Android looks with Xperia UI. However, the company has historically kept things very simple with its UI and doesn't venture into deep overhauls, so the Xperia UI looks almost stock-ish. You can expect 3 years of major software updates and 4 years of security patches.

Of course, there are a couple of small UI revamps compared to the vanilla Android, but Sony has focused mostly on features, which is nice.

Compared to the older Android 13-based UI, the most recent version of the software is practically the same. We noticed the quick toggles in the notification shade are different. Gone are the pill-shaped toggles and we like the change as the drop-down menu now has room for more toggles. This is perhaps the biggest discrepancy between the Xperia UI and the stock Android system.

The homescreen 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.

The Android OS is highly customizable via the Wallpaper and Style menu. Here, you can choose from a number of static and live wallpapers. A cool thing about the live option is the various effects that are applied to the wallpapers in real-time - for example, a cool disturbance during charging.

Xperia UI

This brings us to one of the Sony exclusives, which deserves a mention even though it's not new - Multi-window manager. 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.

Xperia UI

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.

Pros can enjoy the occasional game too, so the Xperia 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.

Performance profiles (or Game Mode) can be set on a per-game basis, and it's here that you get to set the screen refresh rate and lock it at 120Hz regardless of whether the game supports it (though you will still get 60fps if the game does not support HFR). Additional sliders let you select Touch response speed and touch tracking accuracy.

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.

And as far as day-to-day performance goes, we feel like Xperia UI is one of the smoothest around. We didn't experience any deal-breaking issues or hiccups. Everything feels snappy and responsive. The nice haptic feedback in certain scenarios ties everything together nicely.

Benchmarks performance

As a flagship, the Xperia 1 VI is based on the high-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. One prime Cortex-X4 core is clocked at up to 3.3 GHz, accompanied by three Cortex-A720 cores working at 3.15 GHz and another two Cortex-A72 ones at 2.96 GHz. Finally, there are two Cortex-A520 cores clocked at up to 2.26 GHz. The GPU is an Adreno 750.

The Xperia 1 VI comes in just two flavors 12GB/256GB and 12GB/512GB, but the latter is available only in Japan. Good thing Sony provided a microSD card slot as people wanting more storage are stuck with 256GB. Anyway, according to our tests, the storage is likely of the UFS 3.1 kind, but we can't confirm for sure as Sony doesn't give out that information.

Unfortunately, the Xperia 1 VI seems to be struggling to keep up with the competition even in short-burst benchmarks. The device isn't able to fully utilize the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and posts underwhelming results in all of the benchmark tests we ran. The handset outpaces only the older Xperia 1 V and the notoriously underpowered Google Pixel 8 Pro with its Tensor G3 SoC. Even the Dimensity 9300 SoC outperforms the SD8 Gen 3 inside the Xperia 1 VI in certain scenarios.

Sustained performance

Last year's model didn't do particularly well in our CPU and GPU stress tests and the new version of the handset didn't impress us as well. There is a slight improvement in the sustained performance, but not enough to call it good.

Within five minutes of starting the CPU stress test, the SD8 Gen 3 started throttling heavily and couldn't recover throughout the whole test. The GPU stress test didn't end well either.

CPU and GPU stress tests

However, the chassis didn't appear very hot, only the frame felt rather uncomfortable to hold.