Sony Xperia 1 VII review
Android 15
The Sony Xperia 1 VII runs Android 15, with a promise for 4 OS version releases and 6 years of ongoing security fixes, which sounds quite alright. The Xperia software experience is mostly conservative in terms of modifications and close to what one used to call stock Android, but there are some custom touches too.
The previous generation saw a bit more of a stylistic change and this time around things are largely the same as last year. The homescreen is as standard as they come and you don't even get large folder functionality. The Google feed is the leftmost pane, but you can disable it if it's not your thing.
UI basics on the Sony Xperia 1 VII
One of the most obvious custom bits are the quick settings, which are square and all the same size, as opposed to Android and most other maker's approaches, which include bubbly shapes and toggles of varying sizes.
Another Sony exclusive, which deserves a mention even though it's not new, is 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.
Quick settings • Task switcher • Multi-window manager
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. 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 full-featured gaming utility too, called Game Enhancer, 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 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.
Side sense • Game Enhancer
Somewhat surprisingly, there's not much along the lines of general AI features. Sure enough, Google's Gemini and Circle to search are on board - these now come as standard. But there's no AI editor in the gallery (maybe that will be added with a later update to Google Photos) or any sort of other smarts. That said, Sony has added a lot of under-the-hood AI bits in the camera app, active while shooting, so maybe their whole approach makes more sense than the 'AI-everything' of other makers.
Gemini • Circle to search
Performance and benchmarks
The Xperia 1 VII is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, so it's got about as powerful a chipset as you can expect this year, and it's essentially on a level playing field with the rest of the top-tier Android handsets.
What's suboptimal is the fact that, on most markets, there's only a single 256GB storage configuration - Sony is betting you'd want to use the microSD slot for your data, but a microSD slot couldn't hurt when you have 512GB of internal storage either, can it? RAM, meanwhile, is 12 GB. Again, some markets will get a 512GB 16GB version but we have to assume it's a quite limited release. There's a single spec for the global variant at launch - 12GB/256GB.
In the benchmarks that we ran, the Xperia did alright, without truly shining. We got middle of the road numbers in the dedicated CPU and GPU tests - for the chipset, of course, and it's a properly potent chipset, so 'average' is still pretty great.
The Antutu score was a bit more of a letdown next to the results of similarly equipped handsets. It's not like the Xperia will be keeping you waiting, but it's not quite the number-crunching machine that some of its competitors are.
GeekBench 6
- Multi-core
- Single-core
Galaxy S25 Ultra
nubia Z70 Ultra
Oppo Find X8 Ultra
Xiaomi 15 Ultra
Xiaomi 15
Sony Xperia 1 VII
Honor Magic7 Pro
AnTuTu 10
iQOO 13
vivo X200 Pro
Poco F7 Ultra
Xiaomi 15
Galaxy S25 Ultra
Sony Xperia 1 VII
Sony Xperia 1 VI
3DMark
- Wild Life Extreme (2160p)
- Solar Bay (1440p)
Honor Magic7 Pro
Oppo Find X8 Ultra
OnePlus 13
Oppo Find X8 Pro
iQOO 13
Sony Xperia 1 VII
Xiaomi 15 Ultra
The continued load results weren't particularly impressive either. In the CPU Throttling test, the drop in performance was sharp and significant, with the numbers dipping to 52% of the initial values before 8 minutes had passed. The phone would then alternate between stints of 50-ish and 60-ish percent of its initial performance - this graph has more red segments than usual.
The GPU puts out more of a standard flagship showing, dropping to and sustaining levels around 66% of its initial result in the 3DMark Wild Life stress test.
CPU Throttling test • 3DMark Wild Life stress test
Reader comments
- jiyen235
- 15 hours ago
- 2WB
you don't have anything to say so you're just dropping ad hominems eh? awesome stuff bro. Showed us the intelligence that the average Sony fanboy has
- jiyen235
- 15 hours ago
- 2WB
yeah but Apple's apps are good enough and you don't even need to sideload apps for the most part if you're an Apple user. Yes it's extremely annoying doing a lot of things if you're not in an Apple ecosystem but if you are in...
- mi1400
- 15 hours ago
- q{2
there seems 2 dishonesties as always it does... (1) The keep in focus looks only for videos ... watched all Ads and none show it for photos.. i.e. will i still have to keep one hand on volume up/down to zoom in out as the subject is walking, jogging...