Sony Xperia 1 VIII Review: Power, Ports and Divisive Colour

Barely present on the mobile phone market, Sony concentrates its know-how into a single smartphone in 2026: the Xperia 1 VIII. This eighth iteration of its premium handset sets out to move into the age of artificial intelligence while embodying the company's photographic expertise.

One phone a year leaves no room for error, and the Japanese maker has not held back, since its only mobile of the year sits squarely in the ultra-premium category. The specification is polished: a 6.5-inch OLED screen, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, a triple camera array built on three 48-megapixel sensors, and a 5000 mAh battery. Facing it are the heavyweights of the sector, from Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra to Apple's iPhone 17 Pro, by way of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and Oppo's Find X9 Ultra.

Sony is the embodiment of classicism, or rather of conservatism, because its smartphones barely vary from one year to the next. The 2026 edition of the Xperia 1 does shift things slightly. The fundamentals of the series are still there — the very angular format, the textured glass back, the black bands above and below the screen, the dedicated camera shutter button — but the maker adds a new square camera block that spills over onto the edge of the phone. It is not a revolution, but it is at least some change. Wide enough to help, the block does not upset the phone's stability when it is laid flat on a table.

The display measures 6.5 inches and occupies around 86.6 per cent of the front face. It is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2, while the body is rated IP65 and IP68 for water and dust resistance. As usual with Sony, the nano-SIM and microSD tray, a rarity in itself, can be opened without resorting to a metal ejection pin.

Despite dimensions of 162 x 74 x 8.3 mm, which do not make it a particularly compact device, the Xperia 1 VIII stays under 200 g.

Elsewhere, the handset supports 5G and eSIM, along with Bluetooth 6.0 and Wi-Fi 7. It even grants itself one of those small extras Sony has a knack for: a mini-jack socket, still useful to audio enthusiasts and to anyone drawn to the return of wired earphones.

The Xperia 1 VIII uses a 6.5-inch OLED panel, a format relatively rarely used by smartphones in 2026. This LTPO screen, with an adaptive refresh rate climbing to 120 Hz, shows a definition of 1080 x 2340 pixels, or 396 ppi.

True to habit, Sony is sparing with figures, contenting itself with talk of the synergies between its Bravia television division and its smartphones. In practice, the Xperia 1 VIII enjoys a fairly high maximum brightness that flirts with 2000 cd/m²: the display reached 1975 cd/m² under measurement probes.

That is convincing, given that the handset makes no particular effort on reflection management. Reflectance was measured at 45 per cent, a score in the middle of the comparison group, and the brightness of the panel compensates for its tendency to behave like a mirror in bright sun. At the other end of the scale, the screen can drop to 1 cd/m², which is a very good point for comfortable use in dark surroundings.

As always, the various display modes offered by the maker were assessed to find the best possible calibration. It is in fact the profile applied by default, Recommended, that gives the best experience. Average colour temperature comes in at 6584 K, a hair above the 6500 K of the reference video standard. A tighter delta E would have been welcome, though. It settles at an average of 2.74, so below the crucial threshold of 3 under which the human eye no longer perceives colour drift, but certain shades exceed an index of 4. A shame.

With a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in charge, flanked by 12 GB of memory, the Xperia 1 VIII has the best the mobile market currently offers. It duly operates with remarkable speed and ranks among the most responsive handsets in the comparison group for multitasking.

Its GPU performance is more mixed. It certainly does not lack graphical power, sustaining an average frame rate of 123 frames per second in the least demanding tests and flirting with 100 frames per second at the higher setting of the test protocol used.

The handset also achieves very good scores in the supplementary benchmarks carried out, namely Geekbench and 3DMark, though it trails a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra that is visibly better optimised. The recorded testing highlights its tendency to run hot: at 50 °C under a thermal camera, the Xperia 1 VIII places near the top of the temperature rankings.

One of the principal features of the Xperia 1 VIII is its revised camera block. The phone loses the dual-focal telephoto of the 1 VII, which ran between 3.5x and 7.1x, but gains definition, with the dedicated sensor rising from 12 to 48 megapixels. Sony adds automatic scene detection with the aim of improving shots using AI: when the phone is faced with a scene in its repertoire, a small window appears at the bottom of the screen offering automatic settings intended to improve the image.

Main module: 48 Mpx, f/1.9, 24 mm equivalent

Sony has changed little about its main module in hardware terms. It still delivers 12-megapixel images by default thanks to pixel binning. They are certainly detailed, but also heavily exposed, and to prevent detail from being flattened the contrast is visibly boosted. The image therefore lacks naturalness, all the more so because its colour rendering is anything but neutral, and the treatment of very small elements is not the most precise on the market.

In low light, that tendency to over-emphasise micro-contrast returns. The overall impression is flattering to the eye, but zooming into flat areas of colour reveals heavy smoothing accompanied by artefacts. The colour rendering, which is very vivid, pulls towards orange. Naturalness is not really the order of the day here either.

Ultra-wide module: 48 Mpx, f/2, 16 mm equivalent

The phone does well at ultra-wide. In good light, although there is still a tendency to overexpose the scene and to heighten the vividness of colours and contrast, the results are pleasing, particularly since they retain good sharpness towards the edges. More naturalness would simply have been welcome.

The results are more mixed in low light. The processing renders some shades effectively, blues in particular, but the whole is draped in an orange veil and artefacts are visible on a book cover. Smoothing is nevertheless contained and the periphery of the scene keeps its detail and colour, which is no small feat at ultra-wide.

Telephoto module: 48 Mpx, f/2.8, 70 mm equivalent

While the telephoto module of the Xperia 1 VIII loses the dual focal length of the 1 VII and settles for 2.9x magnification, it relies on a sensor of far higher definition. At 48 megapixels it quadruples the count. The results are interesting, even if the processing, still a little aggressive in both colour and contrast, again falls short on naturalness. The lack of precision on the outlines of the finest elements is a particular disappointment, with round test targets struggling to look genuinely round. Even so, the overall effect is flattering.

When light is scarce, the phone struggles considerably more. Because the image is heavily exposed, the finest details are melted away, almost erased, and artefacts appear once more. Sharpness lacks consistency: in short, it is better not to zoom too far into images captured at 70 mm.

Front camera and video

Sony keeps the 12-megapixel front module already fitted to the Xperia 1 VII, for fairly similar results. The processing has the merit of being consistent, which translates into heavily exposed shots with well-controlled subject outlines.

On video, Sony offers 4K recording at up to 120 frames per second, or 60 frames per second at the front, along with advanced stabilisation with subject tracking. The maker leans heavily on editing functions, with a dedicated video creation app, and on AI assistance during capture.

Sony has not changed the battery capacity of its Xperia 1 since the fourth iteration. The 2026 model therefore carries a 5000 mAh cell, an average capacity among smartphones from brands not using silicon-carbon, and the same figure Samsung chose for its Galaxy S26 Ultra. It allows the Sony to manage 21 h 35 min on the mixed-use simulation test, some way behind the 26 h 14 min of the Samsung flagship. The performance is nevertheless very decent and enough to last a day without having to enable the usual Stamina power-saving mode.

Sony does the bare minimum on charging, offering only 30 W at best. A full charge takes 1 h 27 min, which is a little slow by current standards.

The Xperia 1 VIII sits among a raft of premium smartphones released a little earlier in the year. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra and Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra are certainly bulkier, but they offer software flourishes the Japanese model lacks, as well as a more generous update policy.