Sony smartphones have such a distinct segment deal with picture and video options that they lose a number of mainstream enchantment. They price a very good deal greater than even the top-end iPhone, too. The brand new Xperia 1 V does not change any of this—it is $1,399, which is $200 lower than its absurdly expensive predecessor, however nonetheless expensive. (Within the UK and Europe, there isn’t any value drop and you may pay £1,299 and €1,399, respectively.)
There’s rather a lot to love concerning the Xperia 1 V, and it has just a few options which might be uncommon on high-end telephones nowadays, but it surely’s not for everybody.
Hanging On
The Xperia 1 V is immediately recognizable as a Sony cellphone with its signature tall and slim profile. The very first thing that struck me once I picked it up was how grippy it felt and the way gentle it was. There’s Gorilla Glass Victus on the again, although it does not really feel or appear to be glass. Combine within the ridged sample across the aluminum body, and you’ve got a sturdy, stylish look that by no means threatens to slide out of your grasp. The end is refreshingly proof against smudges too.
Up prime, there is a 3.5-mm headphone jack, a rarity in at this time’s flagships. All of the buttons are on the fitting edge, together with an influence button that doubles as a fingerprint sensor and a crosshatched digicam shutter button. On the backside, you possibly can open a flap to entry the SIM tray and—one other rarity in at this time’s top-end telephones—a microSD card slot. That permits you to increase on the 256 GB of inner storage everytime you need. The Xperia 1 V additionally scores an IP65/IP68 rating, which implies it’s going to handle simply high quality in water submersions and rain.
A typical downside with having a side-mounted fingerprint sensor is that it is too simple to set off it when slipping the cellphone out and in of a pocket, which is the case right here. It is a pure place to your thumb to relaxation whenever you maintain it one-handed, but it surely didn’t at all times acknowledge my print and unlock on the primary strive. The Xperia 1 V can be tall sufficient to make flattening the notification shade with one hand a tough process. Sony’s reply is Aspect Sense, a customizable overlay menu that allows you to get to all the pieces together with your thumb.
{Photograph}: Simon Hill
Star of the present is the 6.5-inch OLED display, with a 4K decision, assist for HDR10, and a 120-Hz refresh rate. Sony is stubbornly sticking to the 21:9 facet ratio, and there are slim bezels on the prime and backside that accommodate front-facing stereo audio system and the selfie digicam. Put all of this along with Sony’s Creator Mode image setting, which gives correct colours “as the administrators supposed,” and you’ve got maybe one of the best smartphone for watching motion pictures.
From Extraction 2 on Netflix, to quite a lot of 4K HDR wildlife movies on YouTube, to sci-fi flick 65 on Bravia Core, all the pieces I watched regarded nice on this display. The latter is Sony’s little-known streaming service, and also you get a 12 months free together with your Xperia 1 V. The front-facing audio system are impressively balanced and loud with Dolby Atmos assist, however you even have the headphone jack and assist for 360 Actuality Audio for immersive sound.
As nice because the show is for motion pictures, there’s a number of content material with black bars on the perimeters. Once I streamed one of many free HD motion pictures (S.W.A.T.) in Sony’s Bravia Core app, it had an enormous black field throughout it. Most video games even have black bars flanking the perimeters. You additionally may wish to flip Creator Mode off whenever you’re not watching a film and go together with the brighter, extra saturated commonplace mode, or issues can really feel a little bit washed out. It’s not the brightest show, but it surely remained legible in direct daylight.
