Author: Danielle

Sony has issued a new flagship phone every six months for the last few years, and the company has done so yet again with the brand new Xperia 1.

This is the flagship phone following up the Xperia XZ3, but instead of the long rumored Xperia XZ4 name the company has decided to slim down its branding for a more easy to understand Xperia 1 name.

The company isn’t starting from the bottom in terms of hardware though – this is the most advanced Sony phone yet taking a lot of what made the Xperia XZ3 great, mixing in a little of the Xperia XZ Premium and a few extra features and quirks we’ve never seen before on a Sony phone.

We’re soon set to try out the phone at MWC 2019 where we’ll be sure to share with you all of our first impressions of the phone, but for the time being you can find below all of the details we know so far about Sony’s flagship choice.

Sony Xperia 1 release date and price 

We’ve yet to find out when the Sony Xperia 1 will be on sale, but it’s expected to land in Q2 2019. Exactly when that’ll be has yet to unveiled, and we don’t know how much it’s set to cost either.

We’d expect it to be a similar price to the Xperia XZ3 that cost £699 / $899 (around AU$1,260) at launch.

Sony Xperia 1 display 

The big upgrade here is a brand new display technology, and for another generation the company is exploring the possibilities of a 4K display on a phone.

The Xperia 1 comes with a 6.5-inch display, and while on paper that may sound huge it’s unlikely to feel as big in the hand because of the new aspect ratio the company is using which is 21:9.

It’s an OLED display with the company’s own BRAVIA tech division working toward improving the panel so it should be the same quality as the display on the Xperia XZ3 or even better.

The company has adopted the 21:9 aspect ratios to give you a bigger display for watching films and when you’re looking at photos. The reasoning here is because most filmmakers make their projects in 21:9, so why can’t you watch in that same aspect ratio on your phone?

If you’re watching other content in a different aspect ratio it’ll appear with black bars along the edges of the phone, but the company says that shouldn’t happen a lot as almost 70% of films on Netflix. Lots of content on other streaming services is also available in 21:9.

Films you buy from Sony’s own virtual store can also play in that aspect ratio too, but if you’re watching TV shows that weren’t originally shown in that aspect ratio it’s unlikely they’ll play on your phone without black bars down the sides.

Sony Xperia 1 design 

Because of the aspect ratio, the Xperia 1 is a much longer phone than others you’ve seen on the market. It has dimensions of 167 x 72 x 8.1mm, but we don’t currently know how much it’s weighs.

There’s Corning Gorilla Glass 6 protection of the glass panel on the rear of the phone, and there’s a long border at the top of the display to house the important front-facing camera tech rather than a notch at the top of the display.

You’ll have the choice out of black, grey, white or purple colors for the phone. It doesn’t feature a 3.5mm headphone jack, and the phone is IP68 water resistant so you’ll be able to let this slip into the sink without worrying about the internals flooding.

There is a fingerprint scanner on the Xperia 1 and it’s it’s built into the side of the handset on the right hand edge. To use it, you can just place your finger and it’ll wake up the phone. There’s no in-screen fingerprint scanner technology here.

Sony Xperia 1 OS and spec 

Under the hood is the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset, so you’ll get all the benefits of the top-end processor working behind the scenes but it’s important to note this phone isn’t capable of connecting to 5G.

Sony has yet to unveil when it plans to move into the world of 5G, but you’ll have to upgrade your phone in future to make full use of that technology. It does come with NFC, Bluetooth 5.0 and a USB-Type C port at the bottom of the phone.

Back to the internals, and you’ll find 6GB of RAM which should be more than enough to keep this phone chugging along and there’s 128GB of storage so you can fill it up with apps and media. 

If you want more space for the movies you’re going to watch on this wide-screen display you’ll make full of the 512GB microSD card capacity.

When it comes to audio, the phone has Dolby Atmos hi-Res audio built into it and the speakers are, according to Sony, some of the best the company has ever made. We’ll be sure to push them to their limits during our full review.

Sony Xperia 1 battery and camera 

Powering this phone along is a 3,330mAh battery with fast-charging support but there’s no wireless charging here if you were hoping to avoid using the USB-C jack.

As for the camera, this is the first time we’ve seen Sony embrace a three sensor rear setup. The company has also dropped the megapixel count in its camera too and instead now uses three 12MP sensors at the same time.

There’s a 12MP wide-angle lens combined with a Super Wide 12MP and a 12MP telephoto shooter. All three parts of the camera are set to work in tandem, and the idea here is that you’ll be able to get super wide shots that are easy to view on the 21:9 display.

There’s also 4K video recording with a variety of other features including a new mode called Cinema Pro. The idea here is that you can film and edit video like a professional using the app that’s supplied directly on the handset, and we’ll be sure to test this out further soon.

On the front of the phone sits an 8MP front-facing camera, which doesn’t sound like much but considering Sony’s recent history we’re hoping it’ll be a suitable selfie shooter.

Be sure to check back soon for our hands on review of the Sony Xperia 1, and if you haven’t read them already read our hands on Xperia 10 review and our hands on Xperia 10 Plus review too.

MWC (Mobile World Congress) is the world’s largest showcase for the mobile industry, stuffed full of the newest phones, tablets, wearables and more. TechRadar is reporting live from Barcelona all week to bring you the very latest from the show floor. Head to our dedicated MWC 2019 hub to see all the new releases, along with TechRadar’s world-class analysis and buying advice about your next phone. 

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Sony launched the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus at MWC alongside the flagship Xperia 1. We got an advanced preview of the two new mid-range handsets before the show and were suitably impressed.

They boast unusual but endearing 21:9 displays for a cinematic landscape, Android 9 Pie, dual cameras and decent build quality. As sequels to the Xperia XA2 and XA2 Ultra, they’re looking quite promising.

We also went hands-on with the Sony Xperia 1.

Price and availability

While prices weren’t confirmed at our briefing a Sony executive said the Xperia 10 should be around £329 with the 10 Plus at £429. This does place them at the higher price bracket of the mid-range which could be their undoing, but we’ll have to see what contract prices are like.

For comparison the Moto G7 Plus with the same Snapdragon 636 processor as the Xperia 10 Plus only costs £269.

Widening appeal

The Xperia 10 and 10 Plus have unusually tall screens, even for 2019. Much like the Xperia 1, both the 6in 10 and the 6.5in 10 Plus have 21:9 aspect ratios – the same ratio that most movies are filmed in.

Sony sees this crop of phones as entertainment and multitasking devices. Turn the Xperia 10 landscape and you have a phone that, with no notch or cut out, can play films in the exact ratio they display in without letterboxing. It’s a niche sell, but we think it’s pretty cool.

Sony told us over half of the films on Netflix are in 21:9 and will display full screen on these phones. That’s a solid if niche sell, but the company is also working with YouTube and Prime Video to display as much content as possible in this cinematic ratio.

In the hand both phones are pleasingly slim and narrow, but obviously if you want to attempt to use either with one hand then the regular Xperia 10 is the one to go for.

Splitting hairs

Aside from the screen size, there are some internal differences. The 10 has a Snapdragon 630 with 3GB RAM while the 10 Plus has a 636 and 4GB RAM. There’s dual 13Mp and 5Mp cameras on the 10 with an upgrade to dual 12Mp shooters on the 10 Plus.

The 10 Plus gets a bigger 3,000mAh batter in comparison to 2,870 too. Otherwise, both are expandable to 512GB with microSD, both have side mounted fingerprint sensors, both have FHD+ LCDs, both have a front facing 8Mp camera and both can record video in 4K. Aside from the processor, the smaller Xperia 10 still manages to keep up with the larger 10 Plus, at least on paper.

The 10 comes in black, silver, navy or pink while the 10 Plus comes in the slightly different black, silver, navy or gold. Go figure. All the plastic backed versions we saw look as good as plastic phones can, and we still prefer this to glass on a phone that won’t have wireless charging anyway.

And yes, both have headphone jacks! Considering Sony is still including high resolution audio codecs and an LDAC in both phones, it’s kind of mad that it’s taken it out the Xperia 1 (as it did on the XZ2 and XZ3).

Task masters

Sony made a point of showing us how the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus are great for multitasking for business and pleasure. The extra tall screens mean you can snap, for example, YouTube to the top third of the screen and still use a messaging app in the bottom two thirds.

Even with the keyboard on the screen, there was enough room (especially on the 10 Plus) to comfortably type, read a thread of messages and watch a video. It’s a millennial dream come true.

But it also means viewing emails, calendars and presentations remotely when working becomes less tedious in split screen than it is on phones with smaller or shorter displays.

We’re sceptical of Sony’s claim that Google Assistant is clever enough to enter split screen mode via voice commands but you can use side sense. This is carried over from the XZ3 and Xperia 1 and lets you tap a tab at the side of the screen for a quick menu of app shortcuts.

There’s also a button to let you quickly enter split screen mode. Whether or not you’ll do this much is a personal thing and it’s quite a niche thing to hook a phone’s marketing on, but really these are phones that are best for one handed scrolling and landscape video.

With Android 9 Pie out the box, the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus carry on Sony’s decent early adoption of the newest Android versions. We’d like to hope the phones will get Android Q later in the year but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Early verdict

With dual cameras on both phones you’ll get a bit of a higher end feature for less, though two rear lenses is becoming more common on mid-range phones. If you like the look of the Xperia 1 but don’t want to fork out, the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus have a similar look for half the price.

We quite like the smaller phone as the form factor gives you a 6in display in a compact size, but you get a lower clocked processor. Either way, we’ll have full reviews soon to see if these mid-range Sony phones are worth the asking price.

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MWC is the time for new phones and as per usual, Sony is holding a press conference where it will unveil its latest handsets. You can watch the expected Xperia 1 launch live stream right here.

The Sony press conference will take place on 25 February at 8:30am local time. It’s in Barcelona so that’s CET meaning you’ll need to watch at 7:30am GMT in the UK.

If Sony continues with its current naming system then we’ll see the Xperia XZ4 and maybe an XZ4 Compact. However, it looks like things might get a refresh and the phone will actually be called the Xperia 1.

The firm might also announce some mid-range phones too. Leaks suggest an Xperia 10 and Xperia 10 Plus. A budget option could arrive in the form of the Xperia L3.

Rumour has it, the XZ4 (or Xperia 1) will have a huge 6.5in OLED 21:9 screen with a 4K resolution and HDR support. It will also have a triple rear camera like the Samsung Galaxy S10.

Also see: What to expect from the MWC 2019 heavyweights

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Oppo is working on its own version of a foldable phone which seems to take a couple of lessons from the Huawei Mate X, the latest foldable phone on the block. 

After Samsung announced its Galaxy Fold last week, Huawei entered the race just yesterday when it showcased a foldable phone with minimal bezels.

On Monday, Brian Shen, VP at Oppo took to Weibo and gave us our first look at their yet unnamed foldable phone. 

Shen noted that the company doesn’t think that a foldable phone brings about a whole lot of improvement in user experience, which is why Oppo is not mass producing its foldable phone just yet as it wants to observe the response from consumers first. 

The Weibo post was accompanied by a couple of close-up shots of the phone in question which reminded us of the Mate X. 

Inspired by Huawei Mate X?

Taking little cues from the Mate X, it looks like Oppo’s foldable phone has a bigger screen when it opens up to a tablet. The bezels on the Oppo foldable are a bit more in comparison to the Mate X. 

Even the camera implementation looks similar to the Huawei counterpart as it uses the rear cameras to shoot selfies. It also features a sidebar-like design on the back which houses the dual-camera setup and the branding near the bottom edge. The top edge of the sidebar also seems to house the power button.

There’s just no information regarding the internals of the Oppo foldable phone and it looks like it may be a while before we hear anything official from the company.

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OPPO is working on its own version of a foldable phone which seems like, it took a couple of lessons from the Huawei Mate X, the latest foldable phone on the block. After Samsung announced its Galaxy Fold last week, Huawei entered the race just yesterday when it showcased a foldable phone with minimal bezels.

On Monday, Brian Shen, VP at OPPO took to Weibo and gave us our first look at their yet unnamed foldable phone. Shen noted that the company doesn’t think that a foldable phone brings about a whole lot of improvement in user experience. This is also the reason why OPPO is not mass producing their foldable phone just yet and wants to observe the response from consumers first. The Weibo post was accompanied by a couple of close-up shots of the phone in question which reminded us of the Mate X. 

Inspired by Huawei Mate X?

Taking little cues from the Mate X, it looks like OPPO’s foldable phone has a bigger screen when it opens up to a tablet. The bezels on the OPPO foldable are a bit more in comparison to the Mate X. Even the camera implementation looks similar to the Huawei counterpart as it uses the rear cameras to shoot selfies. It also features a sidebar-like design on the back which houses the dual-camera setup and the branding near the bottom edge. The top edge of the sidebar also seems to house the power button.

There’s just no information regarding the internals of the OPPO foldable phone and it looks like it may be a while before we hear anything official from the company.

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Last December, Intel revealed its new Gen11 integrated graphics solution at its Architecture Day event, and now we might have an idea of what the chipmaker’s upcoming iGPU (Integrated Graphics Processing Unit) is truly capable of.

Spotted by a Reddit user over the weekend, some in-depth benchmarks for a Gen11 part have leaked online, with the results from GFXBench and CompuBench indicating an iGPU that effectively outperforms other 15W chips – that includes AMD’s current Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2400G, and Intel’s own Core i5-8250U.

As reported by Tom’s Hardware, the Gen11 chip in question boasts up to one teraflop of 32-bit and two teraflops of 16-bit floating point performance right from graphics processor integrated into the CPU – no standalone graphics card necessary.

The Gen11 Iris Plus Graphics 940 iGPU that’s been tested is roughly 62.97% faster on average than the AMD Vega 10 (as seen in the aforementioned Ryzen 7 2700U) in the GFXBench 5.0 benchmark test. Admittedly, that number is due in large part to the older Manhattan test, which returns an abnormally high score. When that’s removed from the equation, that number drops to a more reasonable 44.81%.

Of course, these benchmark scores are completely unofficial for the time being, and are likely not a true reflection of Gen11’s real-world gaming performance. That said, they are incredibly impressive results – for a complete rundown of the Gen11 benchmarks, head over to Tom’s Hardware.

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Last December, Intel revealed its new Gen11 integrated graphics solution at its Architecture Day event, and now we might have an idea of what the chipmaker’s upcoming iGPU (Integrated Graphics Processing Unit) is truly capable of.

Spotted by a Reddit user over the weekend, some in-depth benchmarks for a Gen11 part have leaked online, with the results from GFXBench and CompuBench indicating an iGPU that effectively outperforms other 15W chips – that includes AMD’s current Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2400G, and Intel’s own Core i5-8250U.

As reported by Tom’s Hardware, the Gen11 chip in question boasts up to one teraflop of 32-bit and two teraflops of 16-bit floating point performance right from graphics processor integrated into the CPU – no standalone graphics card necessary.

The Gen11 Iris Plus Graphics 940 iGPU that’s been tested is roughly 62.97% faster on average than the AMD Vega 10 (as seen in the aforementioned Ryzen 7 2700U) in the GFXBench 5.0 benchmark test. Admittedly, that number is due in large part to the older Manhattan test, which returns an abnormally high score. When that’s removed from the equation, that number drops to a more reasonable 44.81%.

Of course, these benchmark scores are completely unofficial for the time being, and are likely not a true reflection of Gen11’s real-world gaming performance. That said, they are incredibly impressive results – for a complete rundown of the Gen11 benchmarks, head over to Tom’s Hardware.

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