{"id":431849,"date":"2026-05-17T10:11:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T10:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/431849\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T10:11:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T10:11:24","slug":"weekly-poll-the-sony-xperia-1-viii-is-here-are-you-getting-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/431849\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly poll: the Sony Xperia 1 VIII is here, are you getting one?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sony Xperia 1 VIII<\/a> feels like it\u2019s from a different timeline \u2013 one where smartphone makers didn\u2019t remove the microSD slot and the 3.5mm headphone jack, where they didn\u2019t adopt punch-hole displays… or big, fast-charging batteries.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not going to sugarcoat it, the Mark 8 flagship has a hefty starting price of \u20ac1,500 \/ \u00a31,400<\/a> and the inclusion of a free pair of the excellent WH-1000XM6 doesn\u2019t quite make up for the fact that you are only getting a 5,000mAh battery with 30W wired and 15W wireless charging (no magnets either). A lot of people in the comments under the announcement news were upset about that.<\/p>\n


\n\"Sony<\/a>
\n\"Sony<\/a>
\n\"Sony<\/a>
\n\"Sony<\/a>
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Sony Xperia 1 VIII<\/p>\n

The 6.5\u201d 1080p+ display is not as sharp as the 1440p+ panels typically found on \u20ac1,000+ phones. The list of issues continues \u2013 cooling for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip could have been better. Having only 12GB of RAM and only 256GB of storage for this price is less than ideal too – yes, you have the option to add extra storage, but microSD cards aren\u2019t as cheap as they used to be. You can check out our detailed review<\/a> for more.<\/p>\n

We want to focus on the new telephoto camera a bit \u2013 in a way, it\u2019s boring since it\u2019s a high resolution sensor behind a lens with a fixed focal length, not unlike most flagships out there. Yep, the continuous zoom mechanism is gone. That said, the new 48MP 2.9x\/70mm module produces sharper images than the Mark 7 camera did at 70mm. And it\u2019s better in low-light scenes too.<\/p>\n


\n\"Xperia<\/a>
\n\"Xperia<\/a>
\n\"Xperia<\/a>
\n\"Xperia<\/a>
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Xperia 1 VIII: microSD slot \u2022 3.5mm jack \u2022 shutter key \u2022 new telephoto camera<\/p>\n

In fact, all three rear cameras produced good results in all lighting conditions. And all three support 4K videos at 120fps. Even so, you can get better cameras on a similarly priced Ultra phone from other makers. Those boast the camera pedigree of brands like Hasselblad, Zeiss and Leica \u2013 there\u2019s more out there than Sony Alpha is what we\u2019re saying. And the AI features that Sony integrated into the camera left a lot to be desired.<\/p>\n

How do you feel about the Sony Xperia 1 VIII? We know that the series has its die-hard fans and that it\u2019s a niche product that most people ignore. Which group do you belong to?<\/p>\n

Sony Xperia 1 VIII 5G<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sony Xperia 1 VIII feels like it\u2019s from a different timeline \u2013 one where smartphone makers didn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[342,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-431849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-mobile","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}