Sony is known as a giant electronics company, very famous for products such as TVs, headsets, cameras, game consoles, etc. Sony has always been at the forefront of the market of technology products. They have the Bravia OLED TV that’s the best TV on the market right now. Sony headphones and speakers are no doubt about sound quality. Sony cameras are just as popular as the products listed above. Not to mention its legendary PS series.
Despite being successful in many types of technology and electronic products, Sony is losing its foothold in the smartphone market that used to be their playground. The continuous decline of Sony’s cult smartphone Xperia line is probably due to the conservative in the way. The recent Xperia products have nothing special in addition to the quality of the device that users complain about, making the Xperia series sink deeper and deeper into the mud.
Recently, Sony has released a new phone model which is the Sony Xperia 1 II. Is this a transformation of the Xperia line? See the detailed review article below to answer this question.
- Design and display
It seems that Sony wants to keep its somewhat conservative character on all Xperia lines, with the Xperia 1 II, there is no exception. The Xperia 1 II is an extremely simple, square phone with a flat-screen. Perhaps the Xperia 1 II is one of the few smartphones still keeping the square design when rival brands have switched to soft curved design on their flagship models.
Designing a phone in a flat design language also has its own quirks. You will still keep the physical volume rocker on the right side of the phone. Just above the volume up key, there will be the power button of the machine. This power button is also the fingerprint sensor of the device, many users commented that this is the most sensitive and accurate fingerprint reader on the smartphone market today.
Below the power button is a dedicated shutter button. This is a 2-step shutter button, which means you can lightly press it to focus and then press fully down to take the photo. This is a familiar operation on specialized camera models.
The top edge of the phone is equipped with a headphone jack, which was omitted from the previous Xperia XZ2.
The Sony SIM card slot allows you to open the slot with your finger instead of a SIM “stick” like on today’s phones. I really like this design, it makes it easier to swap out SIM or SD card.
The bottom edge of the phone contains a USB-C port , while the back as well as the front of the device are covered with Gorilla 6 toughened glass, the chassis meanwhile is made of aluminum so it gives the Xperia 1 II that extra rigidity , you know like it actually feels solid.
One of the main highlights of the Xperia 1 II is the 4K 21: 9 OLED display. Sony has equipped its new flagship with a 6.5-inch screen . And yeah, it’s kinda not that big compared with other competitors flagships on the market. Still, even if the screen is not huge, the singular aspect ratio feels really special. In the beginning, maybe a lot of people won’t be used to holding a long narrow phone , but after some time we found it surprisingly useful especially when paired with Sony’s way of running 2 apps on the same screen.
The Xperia 1 II has a resolution of 3,840×1,644 and a dense pixel density . With other smartphones, it can be hard to separate 1090p from 1440p , but with the Xperia 1 II we can clearly spot each pixel with our eyes when looking straight at it. That tells you the screen is very sharp , the icons kinda seem to hover on the display . Everything looks excellent in the default screen mode. Sony also includes modes that support BT.2020 along with a 10-bit HDR color gamut .
One small note though : the Sony Xperia 1 II sticks with a 60Hz panel, not 90 or 120Hz like some flagship phones in 2020 . But that’s the sort of compromise Sony has to accept , so it can equip the phone with its 4K monitors setup.
Overall, Sony still retains some of the features on the Xperia 1 II: minimalistic but very unique and this makes users very impressed.
- Performance and Battery
The Xperia 1 II is kinda a flagship Sony device right now. It is packed with the newest Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chip , along with 8Gb RAM and 256GB of built in storage. Plus it has a microSD expansion card slot , so you do not really need to worry about storage issues too much. It is also IP68 water and dust resistant, which sounds reassuring. On top of that the Xperia 1 II supports wireless charging, like the usual modern flagships.
In day to day use, people generally do not run into stutters or any frame loss on the Xperia 1 II. The streamlined Android interface, it sort of feels clean and quick, and overall it brings strong performance. With that latest Snapdragon silicon plus 8GB RAM , it handles most stuff pretty well, no big drama.
On benchmarks, Sony Xperia 1 II landed 4,248 on Geekbench 4 single-core , and 13,102 points on Geekbench 4 multi-core. Meanwhile, OnePLus 8 Pro scored 4,195 and 13,142 respectively. The scores are close enough that it looks like both phones feel very smooth during real use. So honestly, you should not expect performance trouble on these 2 devices.
Sony Xperia 1 II just grabbed the top score out of the phones we tested on Speed Test G. It wrapped up the benchmark in about 1 minute and 26 seconds, honestly that’s pretty impressive, no doubt.
Battery life is more like average during actual usage, around 6 hours of on screen time. That result is pretty similar to what we saw on the LG Velvet , earlier in our review. The interesting angle is that Xperia 1 II runs a 4K display and includes a 4,000 mAh battery , while LG Velvet uses a 4,300mAh battery. So you can tell the Xperia 1 II has solid performance tuning under the hood , even if the raw capacity is a bit lower.
Xperia 1 II smartphone with triple camera system, fast autofocus, Eye AF, 4K OLED display, Dolby Atmos audio technology and enhanced mobile gaming features: Buy it now
Sony Xperia 1 II 5G (XQ-AT52) Global Edition / 8GB+256GB / Dual SIM Free (Black/Black): Buy it now
Sony Xperia 1 II 5G (XQ-AT52) Global Edition / 8GB+256GB / Dual SIM Free (White): Buy it now
- Camera
The camera system on the Sony Xperia 1 II is one of the most advanced we’ve ever seen on a smartphone. It may not produce the best quality photos, but Sony is aiming for another aspect: speed.
Xperia 1 II has 3 separate cameras on the back of the device. There’s a 12 MP, wide angle camera, with a 1/ 2.6 inch sensor and dual autofocus. Also a 12 MP main camera, featuring a 1/ 1.7 inch sensor, dual focusing plus optical image stabilization,OIS. Then a 12MP telephoto setup, with a 1/ 3.4 inch sensor, dual autofocus and OIS. When creating this camera system, Sony wants to aim for 2 things, one is a 3-way zoom lens of 3 cameras and 20fps shooting mode similar to Sony Alpha A9 mirrorless camera.
In fact, the triple camera has excellent zoom capabilities from wide to medium, medium to telephoto, and from telephoto to super telephoto. To do this Sony has used 16-24mm, 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses. This range makes it possible for the user to record almost every moment even the most difficult.
As mentioned above, the design of the 3 rear camera cluster helps Sony to copy the automatic shooting mode with the ability to focus 20 fps extremely fast on its A9 camera series. This is impressive because the Xperia 1 II focuses three times on a frame before it decides the focus point.
Initially, the author predicted that the Xperia 1 II will use the Sony IMX 689 sensor – this sensor is also used on the Oppo Find X2 Pro and OnePlus 8 Pro but the company has not used it. When asked, Sony share that the reason not to use the Sony IMX 689 sensor for the Xperia 1 II because they had to use a slightly lower resolution sensor to achieve 20fps and a smaller telephoto sensor so they reach 70mm lens. Sony says it wants to target the Xperia 1 II to customers who are professional photographers and who regularly shoot video.
A 24mm lens is the best lens on the camera cluster due to the large 1 / 1.7 inch sensor. The photo captures great colors, is clear in good light, and is quite good in low light. In low light cases, the camera will take a few seconds to process, but the photo will be great when done.
The telephoto lens also produces great color shots, but the image quality is slightly lower than the main camera due to the relatively small telephoto lens sensor, at 1 / 3.4 inch. use a higher ISO to compensate for the exposure. Not that the telephoto lens pictures on the Xperia 1 II are bad, on the contrary, it’s still great.
The wide-angle lens also takes great pictures. The photos are very sharp with a lot of details, even details around the edges.
Contrary to how great the rear camera is, the front camera on the Xperia 1 II is really bad. It gets blurred and noisy even in good lighting and is also bad in low light.
The selfie camera on the Xperia 1 II is, um, only 8MP, with a really small sensor, just 1/4 inch. so yeah it’s not all that surprising that it turns out pretty rough in the photos department.
Skip the front camera, and let’s go back to the rear camera cluster. Sony has given the Xperia 1 II serious photography and video ability via its Photo Pro and Cinema Pro apps.
Now these two apps are designed to behave a lot like Sony’s own dedicated digital cameras. At first, you might feel a little lost, because the navigation is kinda unintuitive, but once you get your head around it, these apps can deliver unreal photo control.
The Photo Pro application gives you digital zoom rings for each lens. 16mm can zoom to 24mm, 24mm can zoom to 70mm, and 70mm lens can zoom to 200m.
The Cinema Pro app is similar to the Photo Pro app, but instead of relying on Sony Alpha cameras, it’s based on the Sony FS series. It provides users with astonishing video control. Users can completely increase or decrease shutter speed, resolution or even the angle of rotation.
- Software
Sony Xperia 1 II runs on Android 10 platform and uses Google apps as default. As soon as you start your phone, you will see the Google Phone, Google Messenger, Chrome and Google Photos apps in the external interface. Sony doesn’t try to create exclusive apps because Google apps have been running smoothly and in popularity for a long time.
The Sony Xperia 1 II is also equipped with some great Sony exclusive apps like the PlayStation app. This application allows users to attach the DualShock controller directly to the device. This is good news for fans of Sony’s PS series.
Tech Reviewer & Product Analyst
Định Bia has spent over 10 years testing consumer electronics with a focus on smart technology. He work as a product advisor at Biareview where he helped customers find the right devices for their needs. He personally tests every product featured on this site using a consistent evaluation framework covering quality, durability, and value. All reviews are based on experience, not influenced by the manufacturer.
