Sony’s Xperia 1 flagships have been looking more or less the same since 2020, but that’s finally changing with the Xperia 1 VIII, which has been transformed into a large square camera island. The phone is claimed to have a vastly improved telephoto camera, as well as an AI camera assistant that looks like an advanced version of Google’s Camera Coach.
While every previous Xperia 1 phone has had three vertical cameras, and the last six housed them in a single top-left corner, the 1 VIII mixes things up. All three lenses are now housed in a square block, along with the flash and a Sony logo, which is raised above the phone but tilted towards its side. It’s a bit iPhone-esque, but it’s very similar in design to some of Motorola’s recent Edge phones, although its angularity feels different from Sony. It’s a key part of the overdue design refresh, blowing a breath of fresh air into Sony’s sleek, but now slightly stale, aesthetic. This is also surprising, not only because it doesn’t exactly match the Xperia 10 VII, which Too Recently it got a brand new look, but adopted a horizontal camera bar instead.
The Xperia 1 VIII is available in four colors: black, silver, red and gold exclusive to Sony’s online store. The camera island has a subtle texture, frosted glass back and aluminum edges as well as a knurled finish on the dedicated camera shutter button. Like previous Sony phones it has a 3.5mm headphone jack, as well as a microSD slot and a combined IP65/68 resistance rating (this used to be the best, although many IP68/69 phones have since bettered this).
The redesign may be overdue from an aesthetic point of view, but it probably also serves a practical purpose, allowing Sony to fit in a much larger sensor for the phone’s telephoto lens. The 1/1.56-inch-type sensor here is nearly four times larger than the Xperia 1 VII, much larger than Apple or Samsung’s best, and close in size to the sensors found in the Vivo X300 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 Ultra. With a relatively fast f/2.8 aperture and 48-megapixel resolution, this 70mm-equivalent lens could be one of the best telephotos around, as long as Sony improves the processing. The only downside is that in order to fit the larger sensor, Sony has abandoned the continuous optical zoom found on its last four flagships – as Xiaomi has copied this feature on its 17 Ultra.
The telephoto is joined by the main and ultrawide cameras, both 48-megapixel and essentially unchanged from the previous phone. The camera system overall has been improved with a new RAW multi-frame processing pipeline, improved Bokeh and updated macro shooting, which is included in the default camera mode and now also supports autofocus.
The second big camera upgrade is the AI camera assistant. When you’re preparing to take a photo, it’ll suggest different options for filters, framing, and which lens to use, as well as more streamlined changes like brightening the photo’s subject, but not its background. Suggestions pop up before taking a photo, though Sony says you can turn the feature off entirely if you prefer. This seems much more powerful than the basic AI camera coach functionality on Google’s Pixel 10 phones, though I doubt many will like the fact that Google’s mode must be activated manually, while Sony’s appears to be on by default.
Sony has also included some other upgrades. There are new full-stage stereo speakers, clearly tuned with Sony Pictures and Sony Music, to be louder and louder than before. The 5,000mAh battery and 30W charging are unchanged, although Sony says the phone will last an hour longer than before due to some optimizations under the hood. It’s now powered by the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and comes with up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage (though only in the Online Gold finish). One big downside is that it will only receive four years of OS updates and six security patches, which is less than almost any other comparable flagship.
The Xperia 1 VIII starts at £1,399 / €1,499 (about $1,765) for the standard model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The 16GB/1TB model is priced at £1,849/€1,999 ($2,355). The phone is now available for order in Europe and Asia, but Sony has no plans for a North American launch.
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