Sony Xperia is back with a bold new look and price | Tech News

Sony used to make some of the best-looking and more forward-thinking Android telephones, however even in its mid 2010s heyday the firm wasn’t great at altering its smartphones’ design language. Xperia telephones had large bezels on the high and backside and had been considerably monolithic – fairly, although.

This decade, the firm’s gross sales have shrunk alongside with the Xperias’ bezels, however you’d be onerous pressed to inform the distinction between the Xperia 1 II and Xperia 1 VII, launched in 2020 and 2025 respectively.

That’s all modified with the Xperia 1 VIII (that’s ‘one mark eight’), the new flagship Xperia Sony has introduced immediately. The firm has radically modified the design from earlier generations, producing a slab with three cameras on the back in a protruding sq. digicam bump, abandoning the skinny line of cameras from older fashions.

Sony says the look is impressed by “rough stone” and “raw gemstones”, therefore the textured end discovered on the Graphite Black, Iolite Silver, Garnet Red, and Native Gold color choices.

Perhaps the gemstone nod is why this telephone is so costly. The Xperia 1 VIII will likely be obtainable to pre-order immediately for £1,399. This will get you 256GB storage and may also internet you a free pair of Sony’s glorious WH-1000XM6 headphones.

If you need a 1TB model, it solely is available in gold and will set you back £1,849.

Around the entrance, the screen is nonetheless tall, and there’s nonetheless no cut out or notch for the entrance going through digicam, making Sony one of the one smartphone manufacturers to offer a clean show on this approach.

Sony is hyping its new AI Camera Assistant that debuts on the Xperia 1 VIII, which supplies you AI generated solutions within the digicam app earlier than you faucet the shutter. It’ll show solutions as tiles, to change the lens, filter or composition of a shot. In this fashion, it’s just like Google’s Camera Coach on the most recent Pixel telephones. The characteristic could be turned off.

Sony has up to date the lenses on the Xperia, most notably the telephoto lens, which is no longer has true optical zoom. Sony countered this saying it was no a technical regression, because the new telephoto lens within the 1 VII is “a 1/1.56‑inch image sensor that is approximately four times larger than that of the previous model”.

All lenses have RAW multi-frame processing utilized, which Sony says expands dynamic vary and helps scale back noise.

Sony telephones haven’t leant into computational images the place the telephone’s software program processes photos to tune them, anyplace close to as a lot as virtually all different Android companies. Instead, Sony leans on the standard of its {hardware}, treating telephone cameras more like precise Sony cameras.

This has meant the Xperia 1 vary is preferred by educated, skilled photographers, however appeals much less to patrons who need to faucet the shutter and get a great photograph. Generally, Xperia telephones make you’re employed onerous to get a great shot.

Elsewhere, Sony stated the 1 VIII has higher audio system than earlier than, and can final twop days on a charge.

I hope to get the new Xperia 1 VIII in for review, as I’m very to see if the design change and digicam tweaks add up to an total enchancment within the line up.

But £1,399 is a tall ask, even when the telephone has the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and 12GB RAM.