Sony Xperia 1 Unboxing and First Impressions: Sony's Best Smartphone

When it comes to photography, gaming, entertainment and audio, there probably isn’t anyone who does it better than Sony. Take Sony’s Bravia technology or alpha mirrorless cameras, lenses and headphones for example, they deliver outstanding performances, let’s not even mention how many blockbuster movies Sony has made to date. So when it comes to their smartphone division, it’s always baffled me as to why they don’t combine all their efforts and make it into one of the best smartphones on the market. Maybe the Xperia 1 will change things for them.

In the packaging, you get all the usual, a 3 pin charging brick for the UK, a USB C cable, 3.5mm to USB adaptor, sim ejector tool and the rest of it. Let’s get the specs out of the way, you get a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, 6GB RAM, 128GB of internal storage of which you can expand using a microSD card up to 512GB, Android 9.0, 3,330 mAh battery with fast charging, and it’s IPX5/8 water and dust resistant.

It has a corning gorilla glass 6 on the back and I believe on the front also so it should be highly durable. Generally, the Xperia 1 is very minimalist in design and with a 21:9 aspect ratio, it’s a tall device, here it is next to the Samsung Galaxy S10+, another smartphone that could be regarded as huge. On the front, we have no notch, but an all screen design with an 8MP front-facing camera. On the right side, you have all the buttons including a power button, dedicated shutter button, the volume rockers and a side-loaded fingerprint sensor. Sony said they notice people accidentally powering the device when using the previous power and fingerprint sensor combo, so they have separated it. it will need some getting used it. For those with small hands, you have side sense so you can tap on the side to load apps and also activate a dual window feature to run two apps side by side or activate the one-handed mode. You can also use Google Assistant to activate it if you wish to do so.

The Xperia 1’s display is one of the areas it should really excel, it’s a cinewide 21:9 4K HDR OLED display with X1 for mobile. For colour accuracy, it’s also been calibrated to mimic the Master monitor used in Hollywood so you get a display that is true to life, less noisy, offers more realism and better contrast. Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube will offer more of HDR content so you will be able to enjoy the feature. To complement the display, you also have Hi-Res audio, S-force surrounds, and Dolby Atmos and boy does it sound amazing whether with headphones in or using the Xperia 1’s stereo speakers.

Next, let’s talk about the cameras. There’s a 16MM ultra wide angle lens at F 2.4, a 26MM standard or wide lens at F1.6 and a 52MM F2.4 2x Optical Zoom, great for Portrait shots with OIS. The stand and the zoom have OIS and the Ultra wide angle lens uses EIS as most of the time when using wide you don’t need all that stabilisation. Sony says they have designed or co-engineered the camera system with their Alpha team and first impression, it looks really good, I can’t wait to share images from it, for example for lowlight shots, they have designed it to capture RAW images first, then in the background the Xperia 1 processes the RAW file to create your low light shots, it’s probably or even technically a better way of doing it. I use my DSLR to take shots that a darker in low light than in post-processing bring out all the details, it’s similar to what the Xperia 1 is doing here. There’s also Eye AF, those who use Sony alpha cameras would know this, it means the Xperia 1 can spot the eye and set focus on and around it, resulting in sharper images, something I value when shooting portraits.

There’s also the Cinema Pro app which looks exciting. It’s a dedicated app that allows you to apply different colour science live to your videos, adjust shutter speeds, white balance and more using the app. I can even imagine this being plugged-in to an external monitor while the Xperia 1 is hooked up to a rig. more on this on Sony’s website.

For the gamers, you have Game Enhancer. With Game enhancer, you can record your gameplay as well as your reactions, take screenshots, set it to performance or battery saving mode, change focus settings and so on. When in battery saving mode, the frame rate is reduced and background apps and activities are also reduced.

First impressions? The Xperia 1 could be that phone I’ve been waiting for Sony to make, it has a great camera, tantalising display, great surround sound, the software seems good, the only let down for me is the battery size, maybe the next iteration will have a bigger battery and 5G for live streaming to twitch.

The Xperia 1 is available in Black, grey, white and purple and it starts from £849 sim free.

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