From £1,099
sony.co.ukWE’RE IMPRESSED
Excellent screen; great camera;
decent battery.
WE’D IMPROVE Price is high;
boxy design; tall display.
THE LAST WORD The Sony
Xperia 1 II impresses in a lot
of key areas – the camera, the
display, the speed. If you like
the design and you can afford it,
then it might be worth investing
in as your next high-powered
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See more of the best phones
at: bit.ly/t3phonesAUGUST 2020 T3 65Te s te d
Sony Xperia 1 IIhe Xperia 1 II shows Sony unafraid to
continue its baffling mobile phone
naming strategy of the last few years- this is technically the successor to
last year’s Xperia 1, and continues with a lot of
the same themes. Those themes include strong
showings in terms of the display and the
camera, as you would expect from a company
that also makes TVs and DSLRs.
The 6.5-inch, 1644 x 3840 pixel resolution
OLED display we’ve got here is a joy to use.
Details look razor sharp, colours look perfectly
balanced, and you’re certainly not going to be
disappointed when viewing videos.
As for the rest of the design, Sony sticks to its
familiar approach: this is a business-like glass
slab of a phone, very much moulded for the
boardroom table or the study desk. Black and
purple are your colour choices, there is a
headphone jack here, and there’s also a
fingerprint sensor embedded in the power
button on the side.
Sony phones usually excel in the camera
department and this is no different, with a
quad-lens 12MP+12MP+12MP+0.3 MP offering.
Sharp focusing, quick shutter speed and
excellent colour reproduction are all on offer
here, and we had a lot of fun touring round and
taking snaps with the handset.
As for the battery life, we were impressed.
Even with the high-resolution, bright screen, an
hour of video streaming only knocked down the
battery life from 100% to 92%, so you’re looking
at around 12 hours of Netflix from the phone.
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worthy of the name
Sony
Xperia 1 II
SONY, SO FAR
Wireless charging is included, which we’re
pleased about, and the phone also boasts IP68
water and dust resistance – it should survive
complete immersion under 1.5 metres of water
for up to 30 minutes without suffering any
long-lasting damage.
The Xperia 1 II doesn’t differ too much from
what went before it in the long line of Sony
flagships: it’s tastefully put together and well
built, with an excellent camera and screen, and
very good battery life.
So why might this phone not sell huge
numbers of units? The Sony Xperia design
remains very business-like – it’s nice, but it’s
quite boring and cold too. Then there’s the price- you’re likely to have to spend a little more than
£1,000 on this smartphone.
We’re very impressed with the Sony Xperia 1
II, and we’d be more than happy to carry it
round as our day-to-day phone. It scores highly
in all the categories that matter, but there are
just one or two factors and caveats that prevent
it from being a sure-fire, five-star winner.
T