Sony Xperia 1 VII Review: A Mix of Old And New (Again)

Sony Xperia 1 VII: Design and Display

Keeping its traditional notchless design, the Xperia 1 VII brings a familiar style, similar to its predecessor, which adopted a more traditional 19.5:9 aspect ratio (instead of the tall 21:9 in past Xperias). Despite its size, the phone is very pocketable and easy to handle, with a textured back and striped sides.

The back is covered by Gorilla Glass Victus, while the front is protected by Victus 2. Still on the protection front, the Xperia 1 VII is IP68-rated for water and dust resistance.

Sony keeps equipping its flagship smartphone with not only a headphone jack, but also a microSD storage expansion. At a time when even mid-range phones are abandoning those, it is nice to see Sony insisting on those features.

Another Xperia tradition is the dual-stage shutter button, which can be long-pressed at any time, including on the lock screen, to quickly open the camera app. The shutter doesn’t have any fancy tricks like on the recent iPhone models, but it offers Sony’s features for autofocusing, which we will cover later.

The display features a widescreen OLED panel with good color reproduction and enough brightness for outdoor use. Sony still frames the screen with top and bottom borders, refusing to install the selfie camera in a notch.

The days of using super tall displays with “4K” resolution are long gone. The Xperia 1 VII uses a conventional 1080 x 2340 resolution with a 19.5:9 ratio, but the borders around it make it feel taller than most phones in the market.

Xperia 1 VII: Improved Software Support

The Sony Xperia 1 VII comes with Android 15 out of the box, and the company promises 4 system version upgrades plus 6 years of security updates. While that is vastly improved over previous Xperia flagships, the update policy is still lower than almost every rival in the same price range.

The phone came with only 2 pre-installed third-party apps, for a total of 31 GB of used storage after updating the phone. During the setup process, however, Sony and Google recommended more than a dozen other apps.

Sony’s customized Android interface is a mix of old and new, with some apps and settings still carrying the design from a decade ago. The most noticeable change is that the quick settings menu was redesigned to display 8 icons instead of the typical 4 in modern Android, which is a welcome change.

Sony advertised the Xperia 1 VII as a “creator’s phone”, trying to associate it with its Alpha cameras, Walkman audio players, and its movie and recording studios. In line with that, the phone packs versatile video and audio editors, with multi-track capabilities. There is also the Creators’ App to easily pair a Sony camera and quickly import photos and videos to the phone.

Not even the most profitable Sony division was spared; the PlayStation App also comes pre-installed for PSN chats, gaming news, and remote console and capture management. Also on the gaming front, the Xperia 1 VII includes a feature-packed gaming overlay to prioritize performance or battery life, check the phone’s temperature, power consumption, frames per second, and easily do screen recordings.

Sony Xperia 1 VII performance

Powered by the fastest processor available, the Xperia 1 VII offers plenty of performance. Daily tasks are fast and fluid, and there is enough power for the productivity and multimedia apps that creators could be interested in.

However, longer workloads such as video processing and especially games reveal that the Sony phone has a tendency to get warm pretty quickly. That in turn forces the phone to lower its performance, as demonstrated in the 3D Mark stress test numbers above.

During those tests, the phone reached almost 50 degrees Celsius, which is not only uncomfortable to the touch but also not good for the battery’s longevity.

Aside from overheating concerns, gaming performance should be pretty good, and the Xperia 1 VII is compatible with all the newest games on the Play Store.

As mentioned in the software section above, users can set games to run with a lower performance setting on the Game Enhancer app to get more stable framerates and lower heat. That in turn can also provide a longer battery life, which is always welcome.

Sony Xperia 1 VII camera

Sony’s know-how in the camera industry is well known, not only with its professional line of cameras, but also with its camera sensors being used and advertised in rival devices. The Xperia positions itself as a creator’s phone, and it shows in the camera section.

The Xperia 1 VII is packed with a large 1/1.35’’ Exmor main sensor, allowing for lots of light to be captured. The sensor has 48 megapixels, but the phone saves photos by default at 12 MP by combining multiple pixels.

Photos from the main camera were very pleasing, with a good level of detail and nice color reproduction. Sony famously opts for a natural color rendering, without artificially boosting colors like some of its competitors in the flagship space.

The camera app natively offers advanced controls for shutter speed, exposure, and ISO under the “Pro Photo” option. And for more control over your pictures, you can select to save pictures in the RAW format for professional editing.

Shots from the main camera were also good at night, thanks to the large sensor, with little change when using the Night mode. The ultra-wide camera, on the other hand, benefited from the Night mode, with a good improvement in image clarity while keeping light sources under control. During day shots, ultra-wide photos from the Xperia 1 VII were good, with a slight loss in color reproduction.

When it comes to zoom, the periscope lens offers a zoom range between 3.5 and 7.1x. Results at the lower end are very good, with a small decrease in sharpness at the maximum optical zoom. Night zoom shots were not as consistent, with both good and bad results.

Selfies out of the Xperia 1 VII were very good, with realistic skin tones and excellent subject separation in the portrait mode. At night, results were average, with a small decrease in sharpness.

As in previous phones, Sony brought some of its technology from the Alpha cameras into the Xperia 1 VII. While those were spread around three different apps, they are conveniently integrated into the default camera app, without overwhelming the user with options.

Advanced video and photo settings can be found in the Photo Pro and Video Pro modes, and special features for focus, computational processing, RAW, and more can be found in the camera settings.

Sony Xperia 1 VII battery

Despite using a 5000 mAh battery, the Xperia 1 VII performed better than expected when it came to battery life. With regular usage including music streaming, commuting with short navigation sections, and some light hotspot usage, the phone survived for more than two days of usage.

Obviously, heavy video usage would drain the battery faster, but our real-world results were mostly confirmed with PCMark’s battery test, which showed not only longer runtimes than rival Xiaomi and Samsung flagships, but also better energy efficiency when considering the performance points in the table below.

When it comes to charging, the Xperia 1 VII offers a conservative 30 W maximum wired charging input and 15 W of wireless charging. Charging for 30 minutes is enough for a half charge, while a full charge takes around 80 minutes.

The Xperia 1 VII is not compatible with Qi2’s magnetic alignment, but it offers reverse wireless charging, called Battery Share by Sony.