Sony has announced its latest flagship smartphone, the Xperia 1 VII, and it fits right into the company’s wheelhouse: a familiar design, tech cobbled together from across Sony’s other hardware brands, and a price tag that’ll sting.
Sony’s last few flagships have been technological powerhouses that eschewed tech industry trends in favor of enthusiast features like expandable storage, headphone jacks, and an emphasis on Sony’s hardware know-how. In recent years, Sony has leaned on the expertise of its Alpha camera and Bravia TV teams in designing its Xperia handsets, and this time it’s added the Walkman department into the mix for upgraded audio.
On the camera side, the big Alpha addition is an AI-based auto-framing mode, which recognizes human subjects and automatically crops videos to keep them centered in the frame (though the max resolution drops to Full HD due to the crop). As for hardware, a new 48-megapixel ultrawide, with a sensor twice as large as before, is the main upgrade on last year’s phone. The ultrawide was the clear weak link in the 1 VI’s camera setup, so it’s understandable that the main and variable telephoto lenses are returning unchanged.
As for audio, high-end components from Sony’s modern line of Walkman audio players have been carried to the phone, right down to using higher quality solder in the headphone jack. AI-based DSEE Ultimate upscaling is supported, along with Hi-Res, LDAC, and Dolby Atmos formats, and the stereo speakers have been given a bass boost.
The big lift from the Bravia display division is smarter adaptive brightness for the 6.5-inch OLED display. The phone has light sensors on both the front and back to more accurately assess surrounding light levels and adjust brightness, color gamut, and color temperature accordingly.
None of the core specs are otherwise too surprising. It’s powered by the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite, with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage — expandable by up to another 2TB with microSD. There’s an IP65 / 68 rating, wireless charging, and a generous 5,000mAh battery. One downside is the commitment to only four years of OS updates and six years of security patches, several years less support than Samsung and Google offer.
The other thing the Xperia 1 VII shares with its predecessor is where it’s coming out. There’s no sign of the phone releasing in the US, though it is available to order in the UK and Europe starting today, where it costs £1,399 / €1,499 (about $1,700).
