The Sony Xperia 1 is the Japanese brand’s first flagship smartphone to feature three 12MP sensors that have the versatility of an ultra-wide-angle camera and telephoto lens. DxOMark has just published its camera review of the device and it gets a rather modest 91 points. It’s the same score as the Pocophone F1 and a point below the iPhone 8.
The device scored 94 points for photos and 84 points for the video category. According to DxoMark, the Xperia 1 is surprisingly not quite on par with its flagship rivals such as the Galaxy Note 10+ 5G which scored 113 points.
One of the biggest issues was its exposure and contrast, and they noticed that HDR doesn’t work properly outdoors and when it does, it produces slightly underexposed photos. It also shows signs of underexposure for indoor scenes as well and they found it to be noticeably darker than Huawei and Apple devices.
Artifacts that affect image quality are also noticeable, which includes ringing and vignetting. When you zoom in, the device tends to smoothen out details with higher noise.
One of its unique features is its 21:9 4K video recording at 24 fps. DxoMark finds its exposure adaption smooth with great white balance, while the stabilisation is efficient. Unfortunately, the video has low levels of detail even in the bright outdoors and it has limited dynamic range.
Overall, the folks at DxOMark are surprised that the image quality from Sony’s latest flagship is just on par with older and less expensive smartphones. They added that this proves that the camera software must be tuned in order to get the most out of the camera’s hardware performance.
Sony has always been struggling when it comes to mobile photography. The Xperia XZ3 from last year had only scored 79 points, which is worse than the Galaxy S6 edge from 2015.
For selfies, the Xperia 1’s 8MP front camera gets a DxoMark selfie score of 78. That’s a point higher than the Google Pixel 2 but it’s 3 points below the Galaxy S9+ and 21 points below the Galaxy Note 10+ 5G.
To learn more, you can check out DxoMark’s rear camera and selfie review.
If you’re still interested, the Sony Xperia 1 is now available for pre-order in Malaysia and it is bundled with Sony’s WH-1000XM3 headphones. The flagship phone is priced at RM4,299 and it will be available only in October 2019.
