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Xperia 1 iv anyone?
- Thread starter sunking101
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$1200, and it's only available in very few markets.
Considering Android phones have become a commodity, Sony phones have become a very niche segment.
At that price point, one would start expecting better software support and parts availability for repairs. I don't think Sony can deliver those yet at the price they're charging. Samsung and the Chinese phones are so common that getting them repaired is easy as parts are more readily available.
Considering Android phones have become a commodity, Sony phones have become a very niche segment.
At that price point, one would start expecting better software support and parts availability for repairs. I don't think Sony can deliver those yet at the price they're charging. Samsung and the Chinese phones are so common that getting them repaired is easy as parts are more readily available.
I used to only buy Sony phones. I bought the mark 1 version of this phone for the 4k display but returned it after a few weeks. The screen is too narrow and the camera whilst apparently being the best in the business, took pictures that looked worse to my eyes. I don't care about it apparently making pics look more natural or more realistic. The pics just looked obviously worse than the pics from a Samsung Note or Iphone. Perhaps it was the post processing.
However, the narrow screen was the main reason I did not like this phone. It was as narrow as the Fold 2 and 3 front screen meaning it was pretty useless without the ability to fold out into a big screen.
Would love to see Sony succeed but their phones just do not cut it for the price.
However, the narrow screen was the main reason I did not like this phone. It was as narrow as the Fold 2 and 3 front screen meaning it was pretty useless without the ability to fold out into a big screen.
Would love to see Sony succeed but their phones just do not cut it for the price.
I had the Xperia 1 II for about 8 months.
Overall it was a great phone, and kinda miss it, i liked the display aspect ratio a lot, sideloading was also great. The 4k Display resolution was superb. The Pro Photo App and Pro Filming App was great. The manually shoot photos looked far better than the photos of my iPhone12ProMax, but just the main standard lens was good.
Point and shoot was crap, the normal photo app sucked, it had no AI at all, Samsung and Pixels are better at this.
A Android update f‘up the fingerprint, it stopped recognizing my fingers decently.
For Macro photography it was unusable because of the focus distance. Camera lenses had no continuous zoom.
Battery was acceptable but not so good.
The Display backlight was somewhat too dark for a sunny day.
Check reddit for more infos, they fixed a few of these things, but sadly people are starting to moan about the IV getting hot and throttling CPU/GPU/Display 120HZ, and crashing filming App.
Sony Phones are fine, they just misses THE final touch to be great. Dunno why it’s so hard for Sony to achieve this.
Overall it was a great phone, and kinda miss it, i liked the display aspect ratio a lot, sideloading was also great. The 4k Display resolution was superb. The Pro Photo App and Pro Filming App was great. The manually shoot photos looked far better than the photos of my iPhone12ProMax, but just the main standard lens was good.
Point and shoot was crap, the normal photo app sucked, it had no AI at all, Samsung and Pixels are better at this.
A Android update f‘up the fingerprint, it stopped recognizing my fingers decently.
For Macro photography it was unusable because of the focus distance. Camera lenses had no continuous zoom.
Battery was acceptable but not so good.
The Display backlight was somewhat too dark for a sunny day.
Check reddit for more infos, they fixed a few of these things, but sadly people are starting to moan about the IV getting hot and throttling CPU/GPU/Display 120HZ, and crashing filming App.
Sony Phones are fine, they just misses THE final touch to be great. Dunno why it’s so hard for Sony to achieve this.
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The hardware is compelling, the price is not. At $999 they'd have a shot at selling a bunch of them.
My number 1 problem with Sony phones, is price. They are way too expensive for what you can get from a Samsung or Pixel phone. My perception of Sony phones is that they target 1-2 aspects and they punt on the rest. When you get a Samsung or Pixel you buy and all-around phone where it has more Pros vs Cons.
That's why the iPhone is so popular and sells so well. They might not be the best at just one thing but they excel at being really good across the board. The same is true for Samsung and the Pixel phones. When you are dropping the kind of money Sony is asking that's what you expect to get. I'm really baffled that Sony are still selling phones. They should stick to the PlayStation brand and TV's.
That's why the iPhone is so popular and sells so well. They might not be the best at just one thing but they excel at being really good across the board. The same is true for Samsung and the Pixel phones. When you are dropping the kind of money Sony is asking that's what you expect to get. I'm really baffled that Sony are still selling phones. They should stick to the PlayStation brand and TV's.
They also should put a PlayStation Vita Store on it and revive the Vita as Phone version.
Just sold my iPhone 13 Mini and preordered The IV, excited to go back to Android as I like to customize my phone. I am a photographer/videographer who shoots with a Sony Mirrorless so its worth it for me.
The 4K 120 quality looks great plus it has true optical zoom 85-125mm which are nice focal lengths. The real time eye focus is great on the Sony Alpha Camera's.
Can do High Res audio.
256gb storage and a Micro SD Slot.
Excited to receive mine this week, if you have any question I can let you know what its like when I receive it.
The 4K 120 quality looks great plus it has true optical zoom 85-125mm which are nice focal lengths. The real time eye focus is great on the Sony Alpha Camera's.
Can do High Res audio.
256gb storage and a Micro SD Slot.
Excited to receive mine this week, if you have any question I can let you know what its like when I receive it.
Yeah please let us know how the heat acts on your IV.
Xperia 1 II was a great phone, if it wasn't the few issues i had.
The other issue i had and forgot to mention, the wireless charging didn't always work, once a while i had to restart the Xperia 1 II to make it work again.
Heat is the issue. SoC gets hot as mofo because it's made by Samsung which struggles a lot with chip manufacturing. That's a shame because this phone does everything better than S22 Ultra (except the pen of course). It has a better screen (that unfortunately throttles to 60Hz due to heat), higher brightness without loosing on color reproduction, more versatile cameras that can all shoot 120fps in HLG, that can all burst full resolution 20fps photos in either single frame and multiframe stacked (photography HDR), it has insane object tracking probably the best on the market. It's a smaller phone but with a huge battery with great endurance. But the heating is real and phone needs few days before it can settle.
I received mine yesterday, did the latest update but I find when I shoot in auto mode with the 85mm and 125mm its in focus but when I shoot in manual mode and RAW format its blurry and super noisy even at 250 ISO and my shutter speed is 1/320 I have tried increasing shutter speed and still the same.
model number XQ-CT54
Was so excited to get this phone and now this - here a link people been mentioning it
Editing the DNG file to reduce the noise the images look terrible.
I have just setup a return for tomorrow at £1299 not happy with the quality at all the update not improved it one bit for me such a shame was so excited to get it yesterday.
model number XQ-CT54
Was so excited to get this phone and now this - here a link people been mentioning it
Editing the DNG file to reduce the noise the images look terrible.
I have just setup a return for tomorrow at £1299 not happy with the quality at all the update not improved it one bit for me such a shame was so excited to get it yesterday.
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I ordered one of these in Ice White and it arrived today.
Sony's return policy is 14 day no quibble, so whilst my Pixel 6 Pro goes for repair, I thought I'd try this.
I've had most of the flagship Xperia's over the last 5 years. I've always loved them, but there's always been some niggles that have ruined the experience.
Set it up earlier today and have some thoughts. Will try and post some up later tonight, not that too many people are invested in this phone or brand (and I understand why!)
I already know the phone isn't worth its price tag. But the bundled in Sony wh1000-xm4's sweeten the deal somewhat. Not that I've tried them. I don't want to unbox them if I need to do a return.
Sony's return policy is 14 day no quibble, so whilst my Pixel 6 Pro goes for repair, I thought I'd try this.
I've had most of the flagship Xperia's over the last 5 years. I've always loved them, but there's always been some niggles that have ruined the experience.
Set it up earlier today and have some thoughts. Will try and post some up later tonight, not that too many people are invested in this phone or brand (and I understand why!)
I already know the phone isn't worth its price tag. But the bundled in Sony wh1000-xm4's sweeten the deal somewhat. Not that I've tried them. I don't want to unbox them if I need to do a return.
I've only had the device for 24 hours, but thought I'd post some initial thoughts.
I've had many Sony devices before, but skipped the 1 iii so the last one I had was the 1 ii.
Firstly, Sony hardware remains some of the best out there. I personally love the shape, size and feel of this phone. I went for the Ice White variant and it's an interesting colour. There's nothing white about it for a start! It's more of a grey tone with some blue / green tones in certain lights. I like it a lot though.
The flat screen is also a huge bonus. Give me this over a curve ANY day. I've even managed to get a glass protector installed with no fuss.
Mine is Spigen and it was a two pack for £10.
![PXL_20220618_110420331.jpg]( "PXL_20220618_110420331.jpg")
![PXL_20220618_110442460.jpg]( "PXL_20220618_110442460.jpg")
The screen is amazing. Every review you see of this phone, and previous Sony flagships, it's the same thing. "4k is not necessary". Well, I disagree. I think it looks amazing when you can natively watch back 4k content you've shot. I also think the colour accuracy of this panel is so much better than the overly neon screens you see on Samsung phones and Pixel (when 'vivid' is selected).
![PXL_20220618_110305285~2.jpg]( "PXL_20220618_110305285~2.jpg")
I've enabled 120hz and I had set me screen preference to 'creator mode'. However I've noticed in this mode the 120hz drops of its own accord (sometimes for battery, sometimes for seemingly no reason) so I'm trialling 'standard mode' and so far it's remained rock steady at 120hz with no drops.
The UI is a strange one. It's very much stock, but I prefer to be able to tinker a little bit more. After using Material You since the Pixel 6 came out, this feels like a bit of a step backwards now. You can't change the grid size for your home screen or app 'drawer' so the icons all look tiny. Just a personal preference thing, but I prefer bigger in your face icons and widgets.
I've slapped Lawnchair launcher on mine and essentially turned it into a Pixel. Just my preference.
What I am surprised about, though, is how easy it is to get a Pixel software experience on this phone.
![PXL_20220618_110333651~2.jpg]( "PXL_20220618_110333651~2.jpg")
![PXL_20220618_110816209.jpg]( "PXL_20220618_110816209.jpg")
One HUGE improvement I've noticed Vs the older Xperia's is the haptics. No one is talking about this! They're tight and crisp. Absolutely lovely and it makes typing a dream. They're loud, though. You can hear how powerful the haptic motor is! But it's no longer a 'buzz' like the older cheap haptic motor they used to use gave you. It's proper haptics.
The phone has ran quite warm on a number of occasions. Sometimes due to heavy load, downloading apps, using the camera extensively etc. But nothing too major. I will keep an eye on that, though.
The camera. So this is the most interesting feature of this phone. I liked the camera on the 1 ii, but for point and shoot, it just wasn't it. I know that no one is buying this phone to point and shoot as it isn't the phone for that. Having said that, the auto mode this phone provides it much improved over the 1 ii. I've not had much time to tinker with the camera, but the zoom looks really impressive and being able to go between points at native zoom is really good. My problem with the Pixel 6 Pros zoom, is whilst 5x is great quality, it sometimes was too zoomed for what I needed. But if I zoomed back to say 4x, the quality was not great as it was just the main sensor cropped in to 4x. With this phone, it retains that quality from 3.5x right to 5.2x. Some of the shots I've taken in this zoom length have been good!
![20220618_093037~2.JPG]( "20220618_093037~2.JPG")
![20220618_093018~2.JPG]( "20220618_093018~2.JPG")
![20220618_093058~2.JPG]( "20220618_093058~2.JPG")
Lower light is also much better, considering there is no night mode on this phone. Just using Auto mode, the phone will pick the right settings for you based on the subject and the conditions. I've found more success with this mode than the Basic camera mode. Even in lower light, details remain in photos that previously would have been a bit of a blurry soft mess.
![20220618_090144.JPG]( "20220618_090144.JPG")
The front camera, another pain point in previous Xperia's, has been updated to a 12mp sensor. I hardly use it, but when I did on my 1 ii I used to just laugh at how exceptionally bad it was. Not the case anymore. Much improved and decent results!
Haven't tried video yet, but I rarely shoot anything meaningful with video. Just the odd thing for an Instagram story which I'm sure this will be fine for.
The speakers are front firing and they are so good. This is another reason I love Sony phones. You can hold your phone properly in landscape and watch a video and not be blocking a speaker. Not only is that a win, but the speakers are easily the best I've ever heard on a phone.
I got the Sony WH-1000XM4's included with my 1 iv. I decided to unbox them and try them out as I've always heard good things about them. I'm blown away by them. With the 3 month free Tidal membership I've got with the phone too, these are incredible. My ears get fatigued with in ear buds, yet I've had these XM4's on for over an hour and no a single bit of discomfort. Paired with this phone, they're amazing.
![PXL_20220618_110850045~2.jpg]( "PXL_20220618_110850045~2.jpg")
So they are my initial thoughts and impressions. I knew I'd like the phone, as I loved my 1 ii, niggles aside. Those niggles are completely gone now and I take my hat off to Sony for literally just improving year after year with this phone. Let's face it, most manufacturers do the same thing, but they use marketing gimmicks and new camera housing to make you feel like you're getting something new, when essentially it's just the same phone. Sony have actually made some big leaps now and I'm really impressed.
I STILL think, the camera needs a simplistic mode with some AI built in to give people the ability to take an easy, social media ready shot. But keep all of the Pro smarts there for those who want it and have the time to get the best out of it. Most of my photos are of my dog who is like a whirlwind. This phone isn't the best choice for that, but the burst mode really comes into its own there - but only when lighting is good.
I look forward to carrying on my tinkering this weekend.
![20220618_095143.JPG]( "20220618_095143.JPG")
I've had many Sony devices before, but skipped the 1 iii so the last one I had was the 1 ii.
Firstly, Sony hardware remains some of the best out there. I personally love the shape, size and feel of this phone. I went for the Ice White variant and it's an interesting colour. There's nothing white about it for a start! It's more of a grey tone with some blue / green tones in certain lights. I like it a lot though.
The flat screen is also a huge bonus. Give me this over a curve ANY day. I've even managed to get a glass protector installed with no fuss.
Mine is Spigen and it was a two pack for £10.
The screen is amazing. Every review you see of this phone, and previous Sony flagships, it's the same thing. "4k is not necessary". Well, I disagree. I think it looks amazing when you can natively watch back 4k content you've shot. I also think the colour accuracy of this panel is so much better than the overly neon screens you see on Samsung phones and Pixel (when 'vivid' is selected).
I've enabled 120hz and I had set me screen preference to 'creator mode'. However I've noticed in this mode the 120hz drops of its own accord (sometimes for battery, sometimes for seemingly no reason) so I'm trialling 'standard mode' and so far it's remained rock steady at 120hz with no drops.
The UI is a strange one. It's very much stock, but I prefer to be able to tinker a little bit more. After using Material You since the Pixel 6 came out, this feels like a bit of a step backwards now. You can't change the grid size for your home screen or app 'drawer' so the icons all look tiny. Just a personal preference thing, but I prefer bigger in your face icons and widgets.
I've slapped Lawnchair launcher on mine and essentially turned it into a Pixel. Just my preference.
What I am surprised about, though, is how easy it is to get a Pixel software experience on this phone.
One HUGE improvement I've noticed Vs the older Xperia's is the haptics. No one is talking about this! They're tight and crisp. Absolutely lovely and it makes typing a dream. They're loud, though. You can hear how powerful the haptic motor is! But it's no longer a 'buzz' like the older cheap haptic motor they used to use gave you. It's proper haptics.
The phone has ran quite warm on a number of occasions. Sometimes due to heavy load, downloading apps, using the camera extensively etc. But nothing too major. I will keep an eye on that, though.
The camera. So this is the most interesting feature of this phone. I liked the camera on the 1 ii, but for point and shoot, it just wasn't it. I know that no one is buying this phone to point and shoot as it isn't the phone for that. Having said that, the auto mode this phone provides it much improved over the 1 ii. I've not had much time to tinker with the camera, but the zoom looks really impressive and being able to go between points at native zoom is really good. My problem with the Pixel 6 Pros zoom, is whilst 5x is great quality, it sometimes was too zoomed for what I needed. But if I zoomed back to say 4x, the quality was not great as it was just the main sensor cropped in to 4x. With this phone, it retains that quality from 3.5x right to 5.2x. Some of the shots I've taken in this zoom length have been good!
Lower light is also much better, considering there is no night mode on this phone. Just using Auto mode, the phone will pick the right settings for you based on the subject and the conditions. I've found more success with this mode than the Basic camera mode. Even in lower light, details remain in photos that previously would have been a bit of a blurry soft mess.
The front camera, another pain point in previous Xperia's, has been updated to a 12mp sensor. I hardly use it, but when I did on my 1 ii I used to just laugh at how exceptionally bad it was. Not the case anymore. Much improved and decent results!
Haven't tried video yet, but I rarely shoot anything meaningful with video. Just the odd thing for an Instagram story which I'm sure this will be fine for.
The speakers are front firing and they are so good. This is another reason I love Sony phones. You can hold your phone properly in landscape and watch a video and not be blocking a speaker. Not only is that a win, but the speakers are easily the best I've ever heard on a phone.
I got the Sony WH-1000XM4's included with my 1 iv. I decided to unbox them and try them out as I've always heard good things about them. I'm blown away by them. With the 3 month free Tidal membership I've got with the phone too, these are incredible. My ears get fatigued with in ear buds, yet I've had these XM4's on for over an hour and no a single bit of discomfort. Paired with this phone, they're amazing.
So they are my initial thoughts and impressions. I knew I'd like the phone, as I loved my 1 ii, niggles aside. Those niggles are completely gone now and I take my hat off to Sony for literally just improving year after year with this phone. Let's face it, most manufacturers do the same thing, but they use marketing gimmicks and new camera housing to make you feel like you're getting something new, when essentially it's just the same phone. Sony have actually made some big leaps now and I'm really impressed.
I STILL think, the camera needs a simplistic mode with some AI built in to give people the ability to take an easy, social media ready shot. But keep all of the Pro smarts there for those who want it and have the time to get the best out of it. Most of my photos are of my dog who is like a whirlwind. This phone isn't the best choice for that, but the burst mode really comes into its own there - but only when lighting is good.
I look forward to carrying on my tinkering this weekend.
That was a GREAT write up! Thanks for that! I agree with you about flat displays...wish my Pixel 6 pro had a flat display. But it looks liek you turned the Sony Xperia 1 iv into a flat dispaly Pixel
I love the build and overall aesthetic of this phone. The fact that it has an SD card slot and headphone jack are great bonuses. Despite the 4k 120 fps video and nice main lens. The soft telephoto lens and overheating has me worried. I'll be surprised if a software update will fix it.
I've had some good results with the telephoto:
And some good images from the main lens too!
Yes it came with the wh-1000xm4's. Which are brilliant with this phone! Great sound. I've never had over ear headphones before, but I've always known that these have been hyped and I can see why.
Nice, Could you please post a 100% crop of your dog nose on the first picture, or simply the original photo?
The photos somehow has been resized inside MR.
I would like to compare the details of yours to an old 1ii photo and one my current iPhone.
Thanks!