To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.To revisit this article, select My Account, then View saved storiesSimon HillIf you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED7/10Sony smartphones have such a niche focus on photo and video features that they lose a lot of mainstream appeal. They cost a good deal more than even the top-end iPhone, too. The new Xperia 1 V doesn't change any of this—it's $1,399, which is $200 less than its absurdly expensive predecessor, but still pricey. (In the UK and Europe, there's no price drop and you'll pay £1,299 and €1,399, respectively.)There's a lot to like about the Xperia 1 V, and it has a few features that are rare on high-end phones these days, but it's not for everyone.The Xperia 1 V is instantly recognizable as a Sony phone with its signature tall and slim profile. The first thing that struck me when I picked it up was how grippy it felt and how light it was. There's Gorilla Glass Victus on the back, though it doesn't feel or look like glass. Mix in the ridged pattern around the aluminum frame, and you have a durable, classy look that never threatens to slip from your grasp. The finish is refreshingly immune to smudges too.Up top, there's a 3.5-mm headphone jack, a rarity in today’s flagships. All the buttons are on the right edge, including a power button that doubles as a fingerprint sensor and a crosshatched camera shutter button. At the bottom, you can open a flap to access the SIM tray and—another rarity in today's top-end phones—a microSD card slot. That lets you expand on the 256 GB of internal storage whenever you want. The Xperia 1 V also scores an IP65/IP68 rating, which means it'll manage just fine in water submersions and rain.A common problem with having a side-mounted fingerprint sensor is that it's too easy to trigger it when slipping the phone in and out of a pocket, which is the case here. It's a natural place for your thumb to rest when you hold it one-handed, but it didn’t always recognize my print and unlock on the first try. The Xperia 1 V is also tall enough to make pulling down the notification shade with one hand a tricky procedure. Sony’s answer is Side Sense, a customizable overlay menu that lets you get to everything with your thumb.Star of the show is the 6.5-inch OLED screen, with a 4K resolution, support for HDR10, and a 120-Hz refresh rate. Sony is stubbornly sticking to the 21:9 aspect ratio, and there are slim bezels at the top and bottom that accommodate front-facing stereo speakers and the selfie camera. Put all of this together with Sony’s Creator Mode picture setting, which offers accurate colors “as the directors intended,” and you have perhaps the best smartphone for watching movies.From Extraction 2 on Netflix, to a variety of 4K HDR wildlife videos on YouTube, to sci-fi flick 65 on Bravia Core, everything I watched looked great on this screen. The latter is Sony’s little-known streaming service, and you get a year free with your Xperia 1 V. The front-facing speakers are impressively balanced and loud with Dolby Atmos support, but you also have the headphone jack and support for 360 Reality Audio for immersive sound.As great as the display is for movies, there's a lot of content with black bars on the sides. When I streamed one of the free HD movies (S.W.A.T.) in Sony’s Bravia Core app, it had a big black box all around it. Most games also have black bars flanking the sides. You also might want to turn Creator Mode off when you’re not watching a movie and go with the brighter, more saturated standard mode, or things can feel a little washed out. It’s not the brightest display, but it remained legible in direct sunlight.Sony Xperia 1 VRating: 7/10If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDAside from a worrying moment setting up the phone, when the Xperia 1 V suddenly got very warm and froze, performance was slick during my two weeks of testing. (Last year’s Xperia IV had issues with overheating, which I am pleased to report the new model has not inherited.) It's powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor inside, backed by 12 GB of RAM. It sometimes got slightly warm while shooting video, but never hot. I played games for a few hours, rotating Mega Mall Story 2, Real Racing 3, and Kingdom Rush Frontiers, and it kept its cool.The 5,000-mAh battery in the Xperia 1 V proved ample. I was surprised to find around 50 percent remaining at the end of an average day of web browsing, messaging, a couple of calls, and a few hours of gaming. This phone will see you through busy days and may stretch to two on the odd occasion you need it. You can top it up and get 50 percent in half an hour, but it'll take a full 93 minutes to go from zero to 100. It also supports wireless charging.Sony makes the best camera sensors, but it doesn’t always nail the camera in its own phones. The Xperia 1 V has a triple-camera system that's capable of great shots, but you need some photography knowledge to navigate the app. There's a 52-MP main camera joined by a 12-MP telephoto and a 12-MP ultrawide. On the front is a 12-MP selfie camera.Photos taken with the main lens are crisp and detailed. Sony goes for a natural look with impressively accurate colors. I love the physical shutter button. You can squeeze it to focus and press all the way to snap a shot. It also works as a shortcut to launch the camera app. The ultrawide and telephoto lenses lack the detail of the main lens, but they are handy options when you want to cram in a wide scene or zoom in on a distant subject.Sony Xperia 1 VRating: 7/10If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDThe camera app defaults to Basic mode, but there is another row of icons with little to no explanation. Switch to Auto mode to have the app detect the scene and pick the appropriate settings for you. If you know what you’re doing, you can go further with Program mode to control everything except shutter speed, “shutter speed priority” for capturing fast moving subjects, or “manual exposure” to control shutter speed and ISO sensitivity.If you’re an experienced photographer or you’ve used a Sony camera before, this will probably be fine, but everyone else should expect a learning curve. I often got caught up fumbling with the settings, allowing my subject to escape the frame before I captured it. Luckily, there is a handy recall option to save three configurations of settings, but this camera app is far from user-friendly. Folks who just want to point and shoot will want anything else.The Xperia 1 V also boasts a Night mode (Sony’s first), and it does a decent job, though you really need to hold still to avoid any blur. When it’s completely dark, you can expect lights to look blown out, and I don’t think it matches up to the best from Samsung and Google. Portrait mode is also flaky.Alongside the Photo Pro camera app, there’s Video Pro and Cinema Pro. If you are livestreaming or need to shoot high-quality video, the granular controls that these apps offer will tick your boxes. Most folks will stick to the regular video recording. The Xperia 1 V can capture up to 4K at 30 fps or 1080p at 60 fps, and videos I captured were smooth and detailed—no complaints here. Videographers may like the fact that you can use this phone as an external monitor instead of lugging yet another piece of equipment around.One complaint is that literally nothing comes in the box other than the phone—not even a charging cable. Sony also doesn't have an official line on software support (I have asked but have not heard back). Most likely, you are looking at two Android OS upgrades and three years of security patches. That's far too little for a phone this expensive.Samsung and Google phones get five years of security patches along with four and three OS upgrades, respectively, allowing you to hold on to your phone for a longer time. At least Sony’s touch on the software is relatively light with minimal bloatware.The biggest hurdle for the Xperia 1 V is its high price. Almost everything we recommend in our Best Android Phones guide is cheaper. If you watch loads of movies on your phone, crave manual camera controls, shoot a lot of video, and desperately want a headphone jack, it's a tempting option. But for most of us, this phone is simply too expensive.Sony Xperia 1 VRating: 7/10If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDMore From WIREDContact© 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. 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