Sony Xperia 1 review: Sony’s best smartphone is also its most expensive

Sony’s Xperia 1 is the first flagship smartphone with a 21:9 screen, but you’ll find a handful of interesting features if you dig deeper

Sony Xperia 1 review: What you need to know

The Xperia 1 is Sony’s most fleshed-out flagship phone yet. Following a slew of disappointing handset launches, Sony is back at it again in full force, and the Xperia 1’s feature list is practically spilling over.

For starters, the Xperia 1 has a fully edge-to-edge 4K screen with a 21:9 aspect ratio. That’s significantly taller than most smartphones on the market nowadays, allowing you to display much more of your social media feed, and watch the latest blockbuster movies without intrusive black bars above and below the screen.

Sony Xperia 1 review: Price and competition

With all these extra goodies, it’s hardly a great surprise to learn that the Xperia 1 is Sony’s most expensive smartphone to date – and by quite a margin. SIM-free, the Xperia 1 will set you back a penny under £850, which makes it one of the most costly Android phones currently sitting on shop shelves.

At that price, it joins the ranks of extravagant Samsung and Huawei-branded flagships such as the Galaxy S10 Plus and P30 Pro. Of course, the latter no longer earns a recommendation at this time, as Google was ordered to stop working with Huawei when the Chinese phone maker was added to a list of companies banned in the US.

Sony Xperia 1 review: Design and key features

The first thing you’ll notice is that the Xperia 1 is very, very tall. Peeping out from the top of your pockets, the Xperia 1’s 21:9 aspect ratio display has necessitated an increase in the phone’s overall dimensions, and it simply isn’t quite as pocketable as other flagship phones.

Be warned, its tallness can make it a bit awkward to use at first. Accessing the phone’s notification tray by dragging your thumb from the top of the screen is usually straightforward, but with the Xperia 1, it’s a stretch. This is no longer a one-handed task, although Sony’s excellent Side Sense feature returns to help reduce some of the issues, allowing you to access a special app tray when double-tapping a specific spot on either the left or right-hand edge of the screen.

This also adopts Sony’s Xperia Intelligence Engine, which essentially uses AI to improve app suggestions based on location and time of day, which is pretty neat. Plus, while Side Sense provides easy access to apps, it also allows you to access the phone’s WI-Fi, auto-rotate and Flight mode toggles, as well as enable the one-handed mode and multi-window features.