Sony Xperia 1 IV review: unapologetically Sony

Design & Display

It’s elegant and functional

I’ve been a fan of the Xperia design over the past 8 years now — Sony stubbornly and unapologetically refuses to move away from that stark rectangle look, and that’s perfectly fine by me. When you grab the Xperia 1 IV, you can definitely feel its sharp edges. However, combined with the phone’s rather narrow build, they give you a very reassuring grip.

That’s all helped by the phone’s weight — it feels light and perfectly balanced (as all things should be). I had no qualms about using the Xperia 1 IV without a case, as it was just so comfortable to wield at all times.


There’s the typical two-step shutter button on the right frame of the phone — another Sony staple, which has been improved over the years and no longer feels wobbly or wonky. The power button houses a fingerprint scanner, and the clicky volume rocker is right above it.

The display has a 6.5-inch diagonal, but don’t let the numbers on paper scare you. It’s a 21:9 aspect ratio, which means the screen is extra tall (or extra wide, in landscape orientation). So, for regular smartphone use, it’s still a narrow phone.


It’s an HDR-compliant OLED panel with a 4K (3840 x 1644 pixels) resolution, a 120 Hz refresh rate, and 240 Hz touch-scan rate.

In other words — it’s a beautiful screen. Just not straight out of the box — you need to enable Creator Mode in the display settings to get natural hues and a warm cast. By default, the screen has that typical punchy saturation over cold whites, which may look more attractive in the store, but I find fatiguing to use.



The max brightness of the screen does hit high levels and I found it usable under the scorching sunlight. Though, I did find myself squinting while trying to take all the sample photos — could be the photo app darkening things, could be too much reflection from the front glass panel.

And I can’t leave the design section without mentioning two artifacts of the past that Sony keeps protecting — the Xperia 1 IV still has an actual, physical headphone jack and an LED notification light. Those are things that have long gone the way of the dodo, at least on premium phones, but Sony keeps holding on, and good on them for doing so.

Camera & Audio

Actual variable zoom, wow

The Xperia 1 IV has a triple camera on the back — an ultra-wide (16 mm equivalent, or 0.67x), wide (24 mm equivalent), and telephoto camera that has actual variable zoom. Yes, unlike last year, where we had two set telephoto lenses and were switching between them (with digital zoom in between), the Xparia 1 IV actually has super-cool tech inside that allows its telephoto camera to physically zoom in, between 85 mm and 125 mm equivalent focal lengths (3.5x and 5.2x).

The lenses have been calibrated by Zeiss and have the Zeiss T* coating for reduced reflections and better contrast. All rear cameras have a 12 MP Sony-made Exmor RS for Mobile sensor capable of recording 4K video at up to 120 FPS… in HDR!

That is all super-impressive on paper, so let’s look at some samples before we talk more about the cameras.



Alright, first the good — awesome colors, amazing detail. Where other phones like to oversharpen details to the point of making them jagged, fine objects on the Xperia photos look pretty honest and clean.

The colors in photos also come out accurate, just the right amount of vibrant, and beautiful.

Exposure and dynamic range, there’s a different deal. The photos can easily come out underexposed, with crushed shadows. If you are out on a sunny day, HDR does a great job at keeping the highlights at bay, which is great.

When the light is less than favorable, we get different results.

Highlights are easily clipped, and photos may come out blurry as the shutter is super slow. With some setup and some patience, you can come up with OK photos, but the premium competitors have Night Mode processing, which comes up with much clearer scenes.

Sony doesn't have a Portrait Mode per se, it has a Bokeh toggle in the Photography Pro app, which adds faux blur in the background. It's... not great at separating the subject, it makes the picture files abnormally large for some reason, and dynamic range suffers in this mode.



In fact, I found that just using the zoom camera and forgetting about the Bokeh effect will give you better, more natural results. Even if the blur isn't super-creamy.



As you can see in the samples above, at 3.5x zoom, the photos look pretty fine — a nice optical zoom with clean details and pretty colors. But, when going up to 5.2x, it's very easy to get a photo that is a bit too blurry or washed-out. At the moment, it struggles a bit with finding the right focus as you zoom in, so I had to take multiple upon multiple shots to get some workable material.

It’s pretty amazing that we can get an actual optical zoom through moving mechanical parts, but it seems to me that the technology still needs some fleshing out.

Before proceeding, I feel like I need to throw in a few words about the Camera app’s multiple photo modes. See, there’s Basic, which works just like any other smartphone camera app. Then, you can switch to Auto, Shutter Priority, Manual Exposure. The latter modes completely transform the Camera app to resemble an actual physical camera’s controls.



But I find it to be lacking. There’s no focus peaking, no zebras, nothing to make you feel like you have been given the tools to actually set up a shot manually. Also, there's absolutely no feedback from the phone when a picture is taken, which will end up bothering you more than you would think.

In the end, the manual modes of the Camera app work like the Auto mode, just with a few extra steps, which I ultimately preferred not to take. It’s kind of disappointing that Sony puts so much emphasis on its camera featureset, yet it looks like it’s all talk and no walk. At least on the photo side of things!

Pro microphone?