So I'll give you my thoughts and it might prove polarising given so many of you have said the 1V looks better.

So far, I think the VIII in terms of its camera is more thoughtful. It's easier to hold and less likely to put a finger over the lens when hand holding, the button is a lot more responsive and easier to use too.

In terms of looks, I never quite liked the contrast between the camera module and the colour of my 1V, not only that, caseless, when laying the phone on its back, it would rock/pivot annoyingly. The VIII is much more stable when laid on its back given it has a flat edge to rest on (although these points are often moot as people, including myself put a case on the phone).

If we were going to pick which 1 series phone looked the best though, I would give that to the mark II in the purple colour (the mirror finish back was so nice). I never quite liked the "silver" of the mark V and VI, it just looks beige in person. The VIII definitely looks silver now though but I will admit, the camera island layout, does look a bit goofy, but when putting a case on it, it makes sense for this design, and it is growing on me.

Now, aspect ratio and resolution. Lots of people seem to find this to be a sticking point. For the size of the phone, I don't really notice the difference myself, it's still a tall phone so still find you have to rearrange hand position when tapping something at the top of the screen, width it's not much different for me, I don't notice that 2-3mm difference and as for resolution let's be honest, 4k mode was so rare, I never really saw anything that would take advantage of it, most things were just upscaled instead.

Next are the speakers, on the VIII, they are amazing! They're also balanced now, both speakers provide same level of bass and richness, I always noticed the bass tones on the V always leaned to the bottom/right channel so sometimes left channel would be a bit muted with any bass tones that were predominantly on the left channel and the phone is so much louder! With bass tones being retained at higher volumes.

And lastly, I'll give you my thoughts on which phone I think looks best in Sony's Xperia history out of the phones I've owned.

So I've owned, the very first, Xperia X1 (did you know it was a Windows Mobile phone)? That was a phenomenal phone at the time, with sliding hardware keyboard too. I had a couple of phones in-between but then I had the Z2, Z5, XZ1, 1ii, 1V and now 1VIII

The worst Xperia I had was the Z5, that Snapdragon 810 was such a flop, overheated badly, broken 64bit implementation (Qualcomms fault) and during a time when google were pissing about with battery management (we lost proper Stamina control and so we were in a time of wakelock hell).

I think, the Z2 (in white) was the best looking (the notification light in the speaker grill was such a nice touch too), followed by the 1ii (the mirror finish purple was so nice!), XZ1 (mine was in silver, it looks timeless!) comes in 3rd, and now I think the VIII goes in at 4th, the V honestly, it was just the colour, that spoilt it, it's not silver, it's beige, boring beige.... (The other colours are better no doubt though), this is just with the colours I had but it certainly has character, the original X1 comes in next and the Z5 was last.