The Sony Xperia 1 is an Android smartphone manufactured and marketed by Sony. Part of Sony's flagship Xperia series, the device was announced to the public at a press conference held at the annual 2019 Mobile World Congress event on February 25, 2019. It’s the world's first smartphone with an ultrawide 21:9 aspect ratio 4K HDR OLED display, dubbed Cinema Wide, and Sony's first triple-lens camera system featuring Eye AF eye-tracking technology seen in the company's Alpha line of professional-grade cameras. The Xperia 1 was later joined by a more compact variant, the Xperia 5, which was revealed on 5 September 2019. Compared to the Xperia 1, the Xperia 5 has a smaller 1080p screen, a smaller battery, and a non-centrally aligned camera module.
On 25 October 2019, a slightly revised version of the Sony Xperia 1 called the Sony Xperia 1 Professional Edition (J9150) was released exclusively in Japan, which is mainly sold SIM-unlocked and unlike the Japan-only carrier models, features a hybrid dual-SIM slot and has an internal storage capacity of like the J8110, J8170 and J9110 models. The J9150 model, however, does not include support for the 1seg mobile TV, nor does it include support for the Mobile Feli Ca or the Osaifu-Keitai, unlike said carrier-only models.
Hardware
Design and build
The Xperia 1 is designed around the new 21:9 aspect ratio display, a rework from the previous "Ambient Flow" design seen in the Xperia XZ3. It consists of a 7000-series aluminum alloy chassis that has a curved edge all around the device, a 2.5D scratch-resistant front and curved-edged back glass panels made of Corning Gorilla Glass 6, resulting in a more squarish but symmetrical design aesthetic, reminiscent of the classic "Omni Balance" design language of old Xperia Z-series flagships. The most defining change in the Xperia 1, as it was in the Xperia XZ2 trio and the XZ3, are the placement of the camera on the back. It is centrally aligned on the upper half of the device, as opposed to being placed on the top-left side like in previous Xperia devices. The NFC antenna is placed on the left-handed side of the new triple-lens camera system, housed in a raised module with chrome beveled edges surrounding it, along with the color sensing (RGBC-IR sensor) and the single LED flash up top.
The front houses the ultra-wide 4K HDR OLED display with slight curve corners and very minimal bezels on both sides, and significantly slim (when compared to the XZ3) but at the metrical top and bottom bezels. On the top bezel is the earpiece that acts as part of the hybrid dual-stereo speaker setup, the 8 MP front-facing camera, ambient light and proximity sensor and a notification LED. The hybrid SIM tray is located on the top of the device, with a sealed pull-out type of cover for added ingress protection. The bottom bezel has shrunk significantly and is blank, omitting the company logo entirely. The second part of the stereo speaker is relegated to the bottom along with the lone USB Type-C port and primary microphone.
The fingerprint sensor is now re-positioned back to the right-hand side of the device as with previous XZ Series devices and is now activated even in the US market. This is possible, in part because the power button is now separate. To mitigate this, scanner is now an always-on affair. Directly above the fingerprint scanner is the volume rocker, and below the power button near the bottom edge is the 2-stage camera shutter button, very rare in smartphones nowadays and a unique staple of Xperia devices ever since.
The Xperia 1's dimensions are in height, with a width of and a depth of and weighs approximately . It is rated IP65/IP68 dust/waterproof up to 1.5 m for 30 minutes. The device comes in 4 colors: Black, White, Gray and in some markets, Purple.
Performance
The Xperia 1 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset, built on a 7 nm process technology with 8 Kryo 485 processors in a 1 + 3 + 4 configuration (1x 2.84 GHz Gold Prime, 3x 2.42 GHz Gold, and 4x 1.8 GHz Silver), 6 GB of LPDDR4X RAM and an Adreno 640 for graphics rendering. It has the option a 64 GB (SO-03L, SOV4,0, and 802SO models) or 128 GB (J8110, J8170, J9110 and J9150 models) UFS 2.1 internal storage and comes in a single-SIM or hybrid dual-SIM versions depending on region, with both featuring 5CA LTE Cat.19 of up to 1.6 Gbit/s download speeds. It also has microSD card expansion of up to 512 GB in a hybrid SIM 2 slot setup.