Sony Xperia 1 IV is a photography-centric phone whose target audience seems to be creators and artists. However, it comes in at an ultra-premium starting price of $1190. Safe to say, affordability isn’t one of its strengths. What is surely a plus, is the phone’s overall camera performance. It has a 12 MP wide-angle, 12 MP telephoto, 12 MP ultrawide, and 0.3 MP TOF 3D depth sensor camera on the back. All cameras support Dual Pixel PDAF except the camera with the depth sensor, while the first two support OIS. The telephoto camera supports 3.5x to 5.2x continuous optical zoom, which is its biggest highlight.
Selfies are handled by the 12 MP wide-angle camera. As you might have guessed, the phone is great for clicking portrait pictures. The gadget has several uncommon camera features such as Zeiss optics, Zeiss T* lens coating, and eye-tracking. Video recording is supported up to 4K@120fps. Creators will surely find apps like Cinema Pro, and Video Pro very useful. Sony Xperia 1 IV has a phenomenal design. It has an aluminum frame besides a glass front and back, both protected by the top-of-the-line Corning Gorilla Glass Victus.
Not only that, but the phone also has an IP65/IP68 certification for dust/water resistance. Sony has also paid attention to the in-hand feel of the phone, as it is slim and slightly lightweight. To be precise, Sony Xperia 1 IV weighs 185 grams and measures 6.50 by 2.80 by 0.32 inches. For colors, the options are Black, Violet, and White. If camera-centric phones don’t come with a good quality screen, the experience is ruined to a huge extent. That’s not the case here, as the phone has a 6.5-inch 4K OLED screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate.
It’s a rare phone with a 4K resolution screen. While the phone’s screen-to-body ratio of 84.2% is good, the PPI density of 643 is highly impressive. The device can go up to around 1000 nits of brightness, which means you shouldn’t have any issues using it outdoors. As far as audio experience is concerned, the phone is perfect. It doesn’t only feature high-resolution audio and stereo speakers, but high-resolution audio and headphone jack as well. In fact, it is among the best phones when it comes to speaker quality. Sony Xperia 1 IV has Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, which expectedly delivers incredibly smooth performance.
Adreno 730 GPU handles things on the gaming front. The phone runs Android 12 out of the box and delivers a near-stock Android experience, which is also a plus. It’s worth mentioning here that it does come with little Bloatware. Where the phone doesn’t quite meet expectations is in the battery life. Sony Xperia 1 IV will get you over the day, but you shouldn’t expect much beyond that. The gadget has a 5000 mAh Li-Po non-removable battery that supports 30W fast charging. This is supremely disappointing since several budget mid-range phones come with 33W fast charging.
Additionally, it supports fast wireless and reverse wireless charging. For communication, the device has USB Type-C 3.2, USB On-The-Go, video output, NFC, GPS, Bluetooth 5.2, dual-band Wi-Fi, and a Hotspot. The phone has a barometer and color spectrum besides the usual sensors. It comes in two RAM/ROM combinations, which are 12 GB/256 GB and 12 GB/512 GB. Sony Xperia 1 IV supports an SD card, for which the manufacturer deserves credit. However, it has a Hybrid SIM slot, so by using an SD card, you won’t be able to use your second Nano-SIM card. Connections are supported up to 5G.
