Sony Xperia 1 VII The Sony Xperia 1 VII packs some of the most powerful photo and video features on the market into a robust build that finally sees a long-term update pledge to match. Sadly, the camera quality doesn't always live up to the promise, and it struggles to stand out on any other merits. It'll delight a niche audience, but it's far too average for such a high asking price for everyone else.
It’s been a little while since a Sony phone passed my desk, so I was chomping at the bit to get my hands on the brand’s 2025 flagship, the Xperia 1 VII. As has been the way with almost all Xperia handsets in recent generations, it is undeniably familiar — Sony is seemingly wedded to this hardware formula, for better or worse.
Still, the phone boasts some interesting upgrades on paper that aim to keep it battling out with the best Android rivals. AI — that most heinous buzzword — has made its way into Sony’s camera array, imbuing it with supposedly superior face and eye tracking, steadier videography, and auto-subject framing. There’s even a 2.1x larger ultrawide camera onboard for a minor hardware improvement, too.
The Xperia 1 VII has a few other tweaks, too, but you buy a Sony phone first and foremost for that Alpha camera goodness — and perhaps the headphone jack, if you still care about such things.
But before we get into that, the biggest news is that Sony promises four years of OS and six years of security updates. Finally! While not the absolute best update policy in the business, this does at least address our biggest gripe about its predecessors.
So, is this finally an Xperia that everyone should consider buying? Bluntly, no. The Xperia 1 VII has a very niche appeal for a few reasons, and it starts with those cameras…
Is the Xperia the best camera experience money can buy?
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Priced at an eyewatering £1,399/€1,499 (that’s ~$1,900, but Sony seemingly isn’t launching this in the US), you’d really hope the Xperia 1 VII would go toe to toe with the best camera phones on the market. The hardware, at least, remains competitive on paper. The triple rear camera array comprises a 52MP 1/1.35-inch main lens (48MP effective), 50MP 1/1.56-inch ultrawide (48MP effective), and Sony’s novel 12MP 1/3.5-inch variable periscope camera, with a focal length and aperture that extends from f/2.3 at 85mm to f/3.5 at 170mm for an effective optical zoom of 3.5x to 7.1x.
Still, these are hardly the biggest sensors found in a phone at this price. The mightily impressive Xiaomi 15 Ultra, my favorite camera phone to date, packs a whopping 1-inch primary sensor and a 200MP, 1/1.4-inch 4.3x periscope zoom. Even the Pixel 9 Pro XL and Galaxy S25 Ultra have larger 1/2.52-inch zoom cameras, though their ultrawides aren’t quite as big.
With that in mind, the Xperia 1 VII takes good-looking pictures (you can see a bunch of uncompressed samples in this Google Drive folder), but there are a few compromises to be aware of. Color, white balance, and exposure are generally spot on, though some might find the contrast a little dark at times. Details are naturally soft; however, there is quite a lot of noise present, especially on the smaller ultrawide and zoom sensors, even in bright outdoor lighting. You probably won’t be blowing many of these pictures up to put on your wall. I don’t have much to say about the selfie camera, other than it’s pretty poor in low light, and the field of view is far too wide for my taste.
While normally I wouldn’t say that bigger is always better when it comes to mobile photography sensors, that usually comes with the caveat that clever processing and computational photography can make up the gap. To be fair to Sony, it has slowly fixed many of the Xperia’s problems. HDR is now solid, and selfie colors aren’t so far behind the rest of the setup. However, bokeh edge detection remains highly questionable, and night shooting is still pretty pointless next to the long-exposure shot the phone takes anyway — it’s just a smidgen brighter. At least the results aren’t artificially exposed, I suppose, and we know how Sony likes to keep image processing as traditional as possible.
Night Mode Motion Blur Bad Bokeh
Annoyingly, I also encountered some overly long shutter times outdoors. So, despite having phenomenal tracking capabilities, pictures can still come out blurry. A soft breeze was all it took to make the camera struggle with the picture above.
The periscope zoom camera epitomizes my love/hate relationship with the Xperia’s camera array. It’s my favourite lens to shoot with, but it’s still not living up to its promise, mainly because the sensor is too small. You’d think that an 85mm to 170mm focal length with an f/2.3-3.5 aperture would produce natural, silky bokeh for portraits, but that’s not the case. The 1/3.5-inch sensor fails to create much background separation, leaving you reliant on subpar software bokeh for added depth. The setup doesn’t capture much detail at greater distances either.
Color and exposure are great, but other mobile photography staples are disappointing.
Check out this 10x and 20x zoom comparison below. While the full-res photos look passable, the 100% crop reveals far less detail than the Xiaomi 15 Ultra and even the Pixel 9 Pro XL. It’s not a disaster, but it’s not good enough when you’re billing yourself as a top dog.
Xperia 1 VII - 10x, 100% crop Pixel 9 Pro XL - 10x, 100% crop Xiaomi 15 Ultra - 10x, 100% crop Xperia 1 VII - 20x, 100% crop Pixel 9 Pro XL - 20x, 100% crop Xiaomi 15 Ultra - 20x, 100% crop
While Xiaomi’s long-range pictures might look a little too AI-enhanced, Sony’s blurry details at a pretty common shooting distance in bright light are undoubtedly worse. It’s almost like there’s not even a proper interpolation pass going on here, which is bizarrely bad.
OK, so is there anything I like about Sony’s camera setup? Well, the color profiles are good fun. The Natural setting looks great to my eye, and the Film option has a lovely nostalgic feel. Again, though, Sony isn’t the only one offering these capabilities, and some might find the five options a little limited. Still, they let you grab interesting shots without resorting to editing post-shot.
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Equally, Sony’s camera app is finally really good. The standard and pro-tier features are all in one place and just a quick swipe away. You can quickly access those Instagram-ready filters or manually fiddle with shutter speed options, giving you the best of point-and-shoot and advanced tools within easy reach. It’s definitely one of the better camera apps I’ve used this year.
As for video, there’s an equally potent split between everyday and pro-tier features, offering control over focus, HDR, stabilization level, focus peaking, microphoto priority, frame rates, and more. Speaking of tracking, the new AI Camerawork stabilization feature works pretty well, helping to keep fast-moving subjects in frame with clever sensor cropping and AI algorithms to keep track of your subject. I’m a pretty poor videographer, but it helped me keep some rather nippy toddlers in frame. It’s less good with non-human subjects, however.
Video capture is where the Xperia really shines.
There are some annoying lingering issues, though. Why can’t I switch lenses when shooting in Pro Video, for instance, and why is AI Camerawork separate from the regular stabilization options, meaning you can’t use it with the pro-tier features? Probably because it only works at FHD 30fps, so it might be equally confusing if it were stuffed in the pro-tier stabilization options, but this all goes to highlight that Sony’s bolt-it-on approach can still feel messy at times.
All of this is to say that the Xperia 1 VII’s camera setup is good, but far from flawless. Many of the pictures I took look great, impressive tracking makes it effortless to stay focused and on-subject, and the videography suite is kitted out far better than most. But the faults are still there, and I feel I’m experiencing very similar problems to the Xperia 1 V, which is the last flagship Xperia I got my hands on. That’s a pretty big problem when so much of the phone’s reputation is staked on the cameras.
What about the rest of the phone?
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
At least the core Xperia software experience remains as dependable as ever. The UI is fast and slick, with minor custom theming but just enough neat tricks of its own, like the Side Sense dashboard, to stop it from being too basic. If you’re big into multimedia, which you’d better be if you’re buying an Xperia, you might get something out of Sony’s Game Enhancer, Music Pro, and Video Creator tools. I’d argue they’re a bit too niche for most, but to each their own.
However, I have a few reservations about the phone’s handling of some day-to-day tasks. Charging, powering through apps, and getting you through to the end of the day are all rather unimpressive for a phone of this calibre. Functional but far from groundbreaking.
Peak charging power of just 27.6W and an average of 18W make for painfully slow charging times, taking 77 minutes to hit 100%. There are no quick top-ups on offer here either; the phone only managed 21% charge after 10 minutes on the plug — the OnePlus 13 hits 44% in the same time. If you often need to get back on your feet in a hurry, you’ll find the Xperia seriously lacking.
Thankfully, Sony boasts two days’ worth of battery life, and while I could certainly make it into a second day of very light use, the phone doesn’t stand out in our battery benchmarks. The good-sized 5,000mAh cell is competitive with rivals that offer similar capacity, and Sony’s performance profile is frugal enough, but it could be considered slightly behind rivals regarding all-important content capture, web browsing, and video playback times.
Speaking of performance, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite powers through daily tasks without a hitch or hiccup, as you would expect. But the Xperia 1 VII can’t summon Sony’s PlayStation prowess when it comes to gaming. The phone runs hotter than its rivals during stress tests, meaning that throttling and performance drops occur more quickly. This isn’t a problem for lighter games, but it suggests that prolonged sessions in warmer climates could see frame rates drop, especially on more demanding titles and emulators. It plays the latest games well enough, but this isn’t quite the dedicated gaming phone some would want, despite the inclusion of streaming, FPS optimization, and analytical overlay tools.
Bare essential AI smarts, slow to charge, and hot under stress. The Xperia struggles to score any wins.
Putting it all together, it’s slower to charge than the Pixel, worse in stress tests than the Galaxy, and has good but pretty typical battery life for a phone of this size. The Xperia 1 VII really struggles to stand out as a must-buy over its competitors in those absolutely key smartphone metrics. I’m not a huge fan of mobile AI use cases, but the Xperia 1 VII doesn’t offer any of those fancy picture editing or document summary extras either. You get cloud-based Gemini, Magic Eraser in Photos, and that’s about your lot.
Sony Xperia 1 VII review verdict: A niche phone, even among fans
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
The perennial problem with the Xperia series is that it’s still living in the previous decade. Yes, Sony has invested in streaming and video creation tools to appeal to new audiences, but any number of third-party options can easily replicate these. Clinging to fan favorite features like the headphone jack, a stripped-back take on Android, and a belief that computational photography doesn’t matter caters to an increasingly niche crowd. Ultimately, very few will want to buy a phone at this price when they can obtain the same or better specs and features for less elsewhere. Especially given the motherboard issues that affected some launch models.
That’s not to say this is a bad phone by any means. The Xperia 1 VII is a gorgeous, well-built piece of kit. The IP65/IP68 rating is robust, the display is sumptuous even if no longer 4K, and the audio package remains as compelling as ever. I don’t mind the side-mounted fingerprint scanner, the dedicated shutter button remains a fun touch, and fans will stand by the headphone jack and microSD slot. It’s been a familiar pleasure to use for a couple of weeks, but would I go out and buy one?
The Xperia 1 VII is a mostly unremarkable phone with a very remarkable asking price.
Well, no, not for almost £1,400 here in the UK, and I don’t know who else would or should want to spend their money here either. Even the most serious mobile photographers don’t have to spend this kind of money to take arguably even better pictures, and it’s not like other phones don’t have you well covered for Hi-Res music or HDR video playback.
Really, I’m just disappointed. I’ve longed to love the Xperia series for years, but the dates just keep ending in disaster. If Sony were charging £999, I’d cut it some slack, but at £1,399, it’s just far too average. At least the update policy is better this year, and the series isn’t dead. Maybe Sony will have something more exciting for me next time.
Sony Xperia 1 VII High-res audio capture • Top-tier specs • AI camera assist MSRP: €1,499.00 Now with Walkman DNA and AI camera tools The Sony Xperia 1 VII focuses media capture, including Walkman DNA with integrated high-quality audio components, and powerful AI tools to help capture the best possible images and video. A 5,000mAh battery promises two-day battery life running the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, a 6.5-inch FHD+ display, and a 52MP camera. See price at Amazon Positives Excellent video options
Excellent video options Great audio support
Great audio support Six years of updates
Six years of updates Still has 3.5mm jack and microSD support
Still has 3.5mm jack and microSD support Gorgeous display Cons Very expensive
Very expensive Average cameras
Average cameras Slow to charge
Slow to charge Hot under stress
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