Sony sets new smartphone benchmarks: Xperia 1 IV review

The subtle but technically impressive difference lies in the Xperia 1 IV’s zoom lens. Because Sony is the first manufacturer in a long time to establish a Zoom which is otherwise known only from the in-house SLR camera division of the Alpha series. While the lens in the predecessor’s zoom lens can only operate in two focal lengths, the lens in the Xperia 1 IV has a focal length of between 85 millimeters and 128 millimeters. This enables smooth zooming and is much more comfortable than smartphones, which have to vary the magnification using two fixed focal lengths.

However, this very nice zoom function does not affect the quality of the photos. In our laboratory tests, the Sony Xperia 1 IV proves to be a very good camera phone. Image quality is at a good level in daylight. But competition from Samsung, OnePlus, Google and Oppo takes even more detailed photos thanks to Pixel binning, software, and post-processing. On the other hand, the image quality hardly degrades in poor light conditions and we are particularly impressed with the result when taking pictures by hand.

The Xperia 1 IV’s front camera also works well with selfies – the only icing on the front camera setup would be an autofocus. The Sony Xperia 1 IV scores a grade of 1.7 (Good) in our expert rating.

It should also be mentioned again at this point that Sony follows a fundamentally different photo philosophy than its competitors: because Google, Samsung, Apple, and company rely on software optimization, Sony allows photographers to take the shot. Gives a free hand to success. This is made possible by the great camera app: experts should feel immediately comfortable with menu navigation and options that are also known from Sony’s SLR cameras. There are high-quality filter options, for example, manually adjustable exposure times and even fixed focus point ranges as well as a manually adjustable number of serial photo shots per second.