Table of Contents
amazon Sony Xperia 1 III reviews
In fact, this smartphone from Sony is the best yet, besides for the unusually exclusive Xperia Pro-I, which is used for professional vlogging and live streaming. The Xperia 1 III will have to face off against the two big names in the current market: Apple and the iPhone 13 Pro Max and Samsung and their Galaxy Z Fold 3.
Design: Substance by Sony
Sony has always been different from what the rest of the world has done so far. Some people say that Sony holds a conservative view, but then one will have to think what would happen if one day Sony makes a phone with “rabbit ears” like the iPhone or a perforated screen or a water drop. Really can’t imagine that.
Describing: masculine and square, are the words that can include the design experience at Sony Xperia 1 III. The body is elongated as a supermodel, that’s because the screen of the machine follows the 21: 9 “cinematic standard” aspect ratio of Sony. If you look at photos or read reviews online, you’ll see that many people criticize the Xperia 1 III for being too long, but when I use it, it’s not much longer than the Samsung S21 Ultra, just because the width is a bit narrow, so the body feels long.
Sony completely says “no” into the screen-manifested defects like rabbit ears, holes, water drops, all that jazz. Hands down, this Xperia 1 III has above-all an impossibly intact, spacious, unobstructed screen by anything having nearing absolute balance top/bottom and left/right. The top and bottom edges of the screen are a bit thicker to make the palm rest, and at the same time integrate a stereo speaker system. All are protected by today’s latest Gorilla Glass Victus.
In fact, the rear design is the most significant alteration with respect to the previous generation in the case of the Xperia 1 III: the Xperia 1 III has a fully anti-reflective frosted glass back instead of glossy glass to limit the sweat and fingerprint generation on the surface of devices, but now roughness is seen to make the machine slippery enough.
Like that, as before, the primary rear camera cluster on the Xperia 1 III follows the traditional style with vertical lenses, not following the trend of induction cookers, gas stoves, honeycomb charcoal stoves, etc. The famous Zeiss remains Sony’s partner. The camera cluster slightly protrudes, but it is nothing compared to the iPhone 13 Pro Max or Samsung S21 Ultra and Xperia 1 III is still fully equipped with OIS optical stabilization for its main and telephoto cameras.
Above are three primary lenses, including a 12MP wide-angle camera with an aperture of f/1.7; a 12MP telephoto camera with an aperture of f/2.3 (70mm focal length) and f/2.8 (105mm focal length) ; and a 12MP ultra-wide-angle camera with an aperture of f/2.2. These lenses are Dual Pixel PDAF dual-phase focus technology enabled.
In a fascinating design choice, the Sony’s Xperia 1 III screams precision and premium, and yet the random decisions along the way make a counter statement. First is the fact that the company has placed up to 5 physical buttons contrarily on the right side of the machine while leaving the left side untouched. Volume up and down, power key cum fingerprint sensor, dedicated camera key, that is all fine, but Sony has actually gone ahead to put an extra key to evoke the virtual assistant Google Assistant, which This key can’t assign any other function. Also, the buttons are “not convex” when touched, thus giving a rather confusing feel!
Secondly, the Xperia 1 III has a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is a good decision; however, the jack is positioned at the top edge of the machine, just below the USB-C port. We men, particular to this habit, usually put our phones in our pockets and when we drop it in, we would tend to put the head down first; hence, with the position of the 3.5mm headphone jack on top edge, it becomes slightly inconvenient.
Screen: One More for No. Two: Sony!
The Xperia 1 III sports a 6.5-inch OLED screen supporting a 10-bit color display and 4K resolution (as Sony defines it, something along the lines of 1644 x 3840 pixels, pixel density 643 PPI), scanning frequency 120Hz. The screen of the Xperia 1 III presents, perhaps on paper, the best specifications available in the world today, which no other phone can actually match.
In practical terms, the display on the Xperia 1 III gives incredibly palpable images, bright colors, a very far contrast range, an absolutely 21:9 screen to have a huge impact on visual appeal. Since except for the iPhone 13 Pro Max and Galaxy S21 Ultra, it has high maximum brightness. By default, Xperia 1 III will run in “Creator Mode”, the most “standard” colors in this picture mode; in addition, the device “Standard Mode” expands the color space to go with brighter, more poppy colors. Over some time, I still feel Creator Mode is the right option to go for instead of Standard Mode, better so if you engage in Work such as editing photos, or videos, so that the real content can be represented with all the authenticity possible.
The 21:9 “cinematic” aspect ratio brings a whole new experience, and when I’m watching my preferred movies and other entertainment apps, it gets me excited instead of being a way to pass time as I am rather lonely. Unfortunately, pure 21:9 content is, however, not available, so most of the time, whatever we consume always has two black bands on either side.
Scan frequency of the Xperia 1 III is another thing to note: this set has a fixed scan frequency of either 60 or 120 Hz. This means that unlike the Samsung S21 Ultra or the iPhone 13 Pro Max, the display refresh rate on the Xperia remains constant regardless of content display; even for static images, it’s 120Hz, which would, in turn, contribute to battery drainage. Additionally, only a limited number of applications run at 4K 120Hz; for most other apps, the Xperia 1 III automatically drops to Full HD+ resolution.
Another dominant area is sound on the Xperia 1 III. The stereo speakers give an almost surround experience, the sound is crisp, and I can hear the sound moving from one edge to the other. This pairs well with the display, making the Sony Xperia 1 III truly an entertainment monster.
Hardware: Super-hot Snapdragon 888
The accepted words say that this smartphone is reasonably unassailable in the view of it being configured as a mobile device of the highest performance these days. The heart of the device is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip with 12GB of RAM. In theory, this Sony machine could snub any task that you care to throw at it.
But, in real use, the Xperia 1 III heats up in no time while taking pictures, shooting films, and playing heavy-duty games. The thin and agile design of the device could be a factor here, but one cannot deny that keeping the Snapdragon 888 chip cool has been a big ordeal for manufacturers. Another one of my experiences is with a Xiaomi Mi 11T Pro, which very infrequently gets to showcase its muscle because of frequent overheating and having to throttle itself in order to cool down.
For instance, with the AnTuTu app, the device temperature shot up by more than 7 degrees Celsius during benchmarking. The total score of the device was less than 650,000 points, punching well below the Snapdragon 888’s weight.
This takes me back to the Xperia Z5. The smartphone equipped Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chip at that time. It also had several temperature issues that led to crashes and many other associated problems. This would become Qualcomm’s “stain”.
Software-wise, the Xperia 1 III comes with Android 11 out of the box with an almost pure Android interface and minor customization. The software experience is superb, fast and smooth in all senses.
However, it comes pre-filled with a lot of bloatware and cannot be entirely uninstalled, and this is what annoys me about it. I mean, I understand an app like Asphalt 9: Legends, it’s a joint venture by Sony and Gameloft to bring the 120Hz gaming experience to the Xperia 1 III. Otherwise, other apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., are okay for people needing it. For those who avoid using these applications, however, it becomes unnecessary excess.
where can you get a Sony Xperia 1 III online
Sony Xperia 1 III XQ-BC72 5G Dual 512GB 12GB RAM Factory Unlocked (GSM Only | No CDMA – not Compatible with Verizon/Sprint) International Version – Frosted Gray: Buy it now
Sony Xperia 1 III XQ-BC72 5G Dual 512GB 12GB RAM Factory Unlocked (GSM Only | No CDMA – not Compatible with Verizon/Sprint) International Version – Frosted Black: Buy it now
Camera Utilitarianism, Not for Everyone.
Everyone knows how much are Sony smartphone image sensors. Sony camera products hold trust amongst photographers. But then again, somehow, the photographic capabilities of the Xperia phone have never had their due value-however, that is still a mindset Sony holds in its very bones.
Whereas the rest of the industry want to spend a lot of time finding ways to ease the photograph experience for their users, simply asking their customers to raise that camera and click away to glory with the benefits brought to us by computational photography, Sony goes the other way… encouraging the user to adjust all parameters manually, bringing the whole fine-tuning system of the Sony Alpha camera to Xperia 1 III.
Look at the UI of the Xperia 1 III camera: even the Basic mode, perhaps, the simplest among all, can still be called tedious when comparing to interfaces of the majority- iPhone included. And if by accident one set Auto, a whole new perspective would be gained: the interface changes horizontally, firing the trigger but missing touch buttons, and lots of confusing numbers like ISO, aperture, focal length,…Other modes like Aperture Priority, Manual Exposure, etc., require quite an amount of consumer understanding of cameras and photography. A person who has never shot pictures with a camera would not know the trigger must be depressed halfway to focus before triggering the shutter.
Initially, I was very excited about the Xperia 1 III’s camera customizability. Later, I found that I used Basic mode mostly. If it was a camera, I would be able to set it up, meter, focus, and shoot quickly, but with the Xperia 1 III, tweaking those parameters just got too complicated, and sometimes I would miss something I needed to capture. Besides, the Xperia 1 III is really just a smartphone, with its camera hardware being limited by sensor size and pixel size; sometimes you just can’t rely solely on manual adjustments to make a great picture-computational photographic processing and enhancement by new software are what we actually need.
When in use, the Liveview display seemed not credible: the image appeared blurred, such that it looked like viewing a cropped image, and it lost details, while the final image was normal. There are even times when I would be looking at the Liveview and not know if the subject is sharp or not.
The colors were real enough and the pictures were sharp under good lighting conditions with Auto mode-too good.
There are no night modes in the Xperia 1 III, but if it senses a scene at low light, it may try and clean it up by stacking images. At this time, one should hold the camera fairly steady for sharp images. Then again, when it comes to low-light images, the Xperia 1 III doesn’t retain much detail in bright areas.
While the ultra-wide would be on the lower end at 12 MP, the detail is better than most competitors and not too much distortion would be expected.
The telephoto camera on the Xperia 1 III lets you creatively work with two focal lengths: 70 and 105mm (35mm-system equivalents). However, whether it is an issue with my unit or the Xperia 1 III in general, the telephoto camera sometimes proves to be a frustrating focusing experience; the focus area jumps around a lot when an object is interposed between the camera and the subject. A bug fix via a future update would be appreciated.
I was impressed by how well the Xperia 1 III did with selfies and background removal, with most being postable without any other editing. The background is smoothly blurred, while the subject is cleanly cut out.
I more so regret not being able to fully experience the video side of the Xperia 1 III, with Cinema Pro being the application that comes to mind. This software bridges the gap between a fully-featured application and an easy-to-use workflow for professionals. Resolution, frame rate, focal length, and the full utility of everything are all at your disposal… These are all saved as discrete video projects for easy post-processing. An uninitiated videographer like myself wouldn’t know exactly how to judge or grade the competition of what the Xperia 1 III has with Cinema Pro.
Exceeded Expectations in Battery Life
Xperia 1 III now boasts a 4,500-mAh battery, which is 500 mAh larger than its predecessor. However, given that this device has to run on the Snapdragon 888 chipset with a preceding 4K 120Hz display, I was initially not too confident about the use time of such a smartphone. But in reality, Xperia 1 III has proved to be beyond the expected.
With a very high average usage frequency, the device could go up to 5-6 hours on-screen. Unless you plan on going out to shoot or record videos, you should consider carrying a power bank, but under normal use, you can be assured that the Xperia 1 III will handle it readily. The Xperia 1 III supports a maximum 30W of charging power, which Sony claims can charge the battery to 50% in 30 minutes.
When charging, the first half hour is indeed very rapid charging until reaching 50%, but after that, it slows down considerably. This is Sony’s way of maintaining a longer battery life. It takes almost 2 hours to fully charge the device to be 100% charged. .
Summary
Sony has put in its efforts in creating the substance that goes into the Xperia 1 III, but it is as clear as day that this is not a mass product. The machine has its distinctive design and may look a little longer than usual. There are a lot of buttons attached to it. An excellent screen but not much of content to exploit. Powerful camera hardware but asks for a background in photography from users. It can be claimed as a super smartphone but only for those who learn and are ready to accept some limitations of the product.