If you have noticed flagship phones in the past few years, they oftentimes remove the headphone jack as a feature. Some justify it for increasing battery capacity, others think that removing it will improve water resistance. Those are NOT an issue for the Sony Xperia 1 V, which is a 2023 flagship that STILL keeps the headphone jack.
While we don’t expect it to rank highly on DxOMark’s rankings (more so beating the P60 Pro for the top spot), the Xperia 1 IV is a solid all-rounder flagship. It still remains one of the very few phones to have a 4K resolution on its display–which is a 6.5-inch HDR OLED panel that has a 120hz refresh rate, though it’s not the adaptive LTPO variety. The display has no punch-holes or any fancy under-display camera–you have the 12-megapixel selfie shooter housed on the top bezel. Protecting both front and back is Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which is the latest protection you can get right now.
Despite still keeping the headphone jack, the Xperia 1 V does come with an IP68 certification and a 5000mAh battery that supports 30w wired and wireless charging–admittedly not the fastest, but still good enough for daily use to not worry about the battery wearing down quickly. Not to mention, the Xperia 1 V also has stereo speakers.
Also making the Xperia 1 V amazing as a 2023 flagship is that it still has a MicroSD card slot despite having 256GB internal storage–perfect for those who need extra space. Like every 2023 flagship, the Xperia 1 V has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor and 12GB RAM, and a 60% larger keat diffusion sheet volume helps manage thermals.
With all that said, how are it’s cameras? The main camera is an interesting 52-megapixel, 1/1.35-inch sensor that uses an unconventional 4.3:3 aspect ratio. Realistically, it only uses 48 megapixels due to the cropping it implements in both photo and video.
As for its other two cameras, the Xperia 1 V retains the same 12-megapixel telephoto camera used on its predecessor. To recall, the telephoto camera has an 85mm-125mm continuous zoom and f/2.3-2.8 variable aperture. The same goes for the ultra-wide camera, which is a 12-megapixel sensor that has autofocus. On top of those cameras, it retains a classic Xperia feature by having a dedicated shutter button.
What’s the catch then? The Xperia 1 V is an expensive flagship, as it is priced at 1399 Euros(~Php 85.3k) in Europe–which makes the iPhone 14 Pro Max or even the Galaxy S23 Ultra a bargain.
