Sony Xperia 1 VIII Honest review
Hey everyone, so I recently placed an order with Swiftronics for a Sony Xperia 1 VIII, I was also able to get 10% off because I somehow won the prediction of who's going to win in a football match between USA and Australia. Even though I'm not a football fan, and know nothing about football😂
It's officially been 1 week since I have received the phone, and I'm coming from the Xperia 1 V, which I have used for over 3 years, and loved the experience. I've been using Sony devices my whole life.
The pros:
Camera is AMAZING, like truly amazing, I though my Sony Xperia 1 V camera was great, but the 1 VIII camera is just on another level, the ultra wide, the zoom camera, and the regular cameras, are all fantastic, pictures are clear as day, zoom works really well and shared a lot of details even at maximum zoom of 17.5X. I went to a concert of Evanescence at Jones Beach, it was on an actual beach, and what was the most challenging for any device is the fact that during the night, it was pitch dark, and the only light was coming from the stage itself, and even in those conditions my videos shot at 4K 120fps came out much, and I mean MUCH better compared to my wife's S26 Ultra. I'm not even comparing it to an iPhone, cause iPhone truly sucks when shooting videos during night time (confirmed by my friends from concert with 16 PM and 17 PM). By the way, in true Sony fashion, when you shoot a video at a concert, those microphones pick up EVERYTHING, and when I play the videos to my friends they are shocked, there are no distortions, and as you know concerts get LOUD.
Speed: the phone is very fast and snappy, anything you want to do works right away, without any delay, 12GB of ram is more than enough, when you take into account that Sony doesn't have their own UI on top of stock android, unlike Samsung with their One UI that eats up half of ram out of the box.
The design: I love the design, I got the phone in red color, and it was the best decision, it is really good looking, I constantly get compliments from everyone, saying that this phone is just drop dead gorgeous. I love the fact that Sony as always, did not go for the punch hole or a notch in the screen, and kept the stereo speakers.
Speaking of speakers, they are FANTASTIC, so loud and clear, compared even with the 1 V, and 1 V speakers were a good upgrade compared to the 1 III and the 1 IV, but the 1 VIII is much much better, louder, and land more clarity than before. Love that.
The display: It's large, it's bright, the color accuracy is amazing, yes it's not 4K, I was kind of sceptical about it at first, but I can't tell much difference, besides when watching 4K content, if compared with my 1 V, I can still tell the difference. But using the phone during sunny day became MUCH easier.
So far, I love everything about this phone, and I'm very happy that I finally upgraded and skipped the 1 VI and the 1 VII.
CONS:
let's be honest, everyone is always waiting for cons.
My biggest issue with the phone, is the fact that it does not support 5G out of the box in the US, I thought that I can get around it by disabling DSDS in the menu, but unfortunately no, it is only running on 4G LTE which is a lack laster here in NYC, and I'm using T-Mobile, which is the most friendly carrier for foreign devices. I did however with the help of reddit and XDA forum figured out how you can override the settings by unlocking the bootloader, and make the phone work on 5G, and someone even said that after relocking the bootloader the 5G still worked. But it will require to erase the phone fully, and then having to set it up again with all the authenticators, emails, bank account, Google wallet, it's just a hassle I don't want to deal with at the moment. But I will include the references to the forum, hopefully it helps someone, because when I was looking for information before buying the phone, I couldn't find anyone who had done research on it in depth. Also, on the Sony developer website where you have to request the code to unlocking the bootloader, the user on XDA told me that he chose Sony Xperia 1 VII, and used the IMEI from 1 VIII, and it worked, for anyone who was wondering.
https://xdaforums.com/t/enable-5g-global-rf-bands-on-xperia-5g-lte-ca.4753150/