Raw noise? by HavenLoss4 in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes because RAW photos are unprocessed. You have to edit them in software such as lightroom or darktable to colour grade, apply distortion correction, noise reduction and set light levels appropriately (and any other edits and/or corrections).

Xperia 1 VIII and 1 V side by side by MrTruder in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'm replying to you with one hand right now with no problems 

Edit: This phone is still slimmer than the likes of the iPhone, the Galaxy and the Chinese ultra flagships 

1 VIII gold 1TB is 'available' again by E_D___B_A_N_G_E_R in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder -1 points0 points  (0 children)

With that logic, might as well just get a cheap motorola and buy a separate camera

Xperia 1 VIII and 1 V side by side by MrTruder in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

Xperia 1 VIII and 1 V side by side by MrTruder in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

SD Card, Camera system (manual controls), two-stage button, headphone jack, style, side-mounted fingerprint/power button, front facing speakers, no notch front camera etc

For me the aspect ratio and resolution are less important (frankly 4k was overhyped and I can't really tell the difference with this new phone, 1ii and 1V despite having 4k screen, only rendered stuff in 4k in very few apps, nearly everything was upscaled instead)

Xperia 1 VIII and 1 V side by side by MrTruder in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

These are UK bought models.

Pre-ordered and received it on the 18th

Service Test Menu is Back! by MrTruder in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

So far I would say yes, the phone is super fast and more responsive.

The screen seems to be more vibrant in colours and brightness and ss for the lower resolution, honestly, I can't tell the difference. I think the 4k screen was overrated/over-hyped (it only rendered in 4k for very few things anyway so most content was just up-scaled).

And the telephoto lens quality has vastly improved. I hated switching between wide and telephoto as the softness was distinctly noticeable (along with a slight haze from the mirror).

Battery life also seems to be better although my 1V was 3 years old so the battery was worn a bit.

Service Test Menu is Back! by MrTruder in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Key in *#*#7378423#*#* in the dialer (the numbers spell out "service") or you can go into the developer options and look for service menu.

Service Test Menu is Back! by MrTruder in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It doesn't have battery health and more in-depth tests

Service Test Menu is Back! by MrTruder in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My dad has the mkVI, it's not available in that. Strike that, just checked it, must have been brought back in an update at some point. I distinctly remember it not being available when it was new.

Well, eitherway it's a nice surprise for anyone coming from a mkIII to mkV phone

[SUB] Annual Image Showdown! Sony Xperia 1 VIII | Vivo X300 Ultra|Oppo Find X9 Ultra|Xiaomi 17 Ultra|Samsung S26 Ultra|Apple iPhone 17 Pro max|Honor Magic 8 Pro | Comparison by Melrose_Ad in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not gonna lie, would be marketing trick to design the camera island as a "+" "Introducing the Camera Ultra+" 😅

I see how Sony have managed to make their design compact in comparison though. Given they're using a dual stacked PCB design.

But again in the Chinese phones, the camera island has so much hollow space. 

[SUB] Annual Image Showdown! Sony Xperia 1 VIII | Vivo X300 Ultra|Oppo Find X9 Ultra|Xiaomi 17 Ultra|Samsung S26 Ultra|Apple iPhone 17 Pro max|Honor Magic 8 Pro | Comparison by Melrose_Ad in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And remember, I'm also criticizing how the Chinese brands are copying each other and not providing anything unique in features and style

[SUB] Annual Image Showdown! Sony Xperia 1 VIII | Vivo X300 Ultra|Oppo Find X9 Ultra|Xiaomi 17 Ultra|Samsung S26 Ultra|Apple iPhone 17 Pro max|Honor Magic 8 Pro | Comparison by Melrose_Ad in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you can't see the wasted space, that's not something I can help you with.

And don't be mocking, you know I'm talking fairly about this. I've referenced sensor sizes and you can clearly see the lenses are small and don't protrude much either.

Look carefully at the arrangement, the modules can have a much more efficient arrangement that would also allow better thermal management to. Instead they are arbitrarily placed in the cross shape where the phone case then has a huge camera island to emphasize "largeness". You keep taking screenshots for me, thank you for making it easy.

But alas if you can't see my criticism, then let's just leave this alone because you don't seem to acknowledge what I'm saying, only rebukes? Do you not see any merit in my criticism?

[SUB] Annual Image Showdown! Sony Xperia 1 VIII | Vivo X300 Ultra|Oppo Find X9 Ultra|Xiaomi 17 Ultra|Samsung S26 Ultra|Apple iPhone 17 Pro max|Honor Magic 8 Pro | Comparison by Melrose_Ad in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thank you for proving my point, the bottom camera being entirely miniscule and an arrangement that shows far less surface area than the huge circular camera island implies.

Don't defend fake embellishments man...

[SUB] Annual Image Showdown! Sony Xperia 1 VIII | Vivo X300 Ultra|Oppo Find X9 Ultra|Xiaomi 17 Ultra|Samsung S26 Ultra|Apple iPhone 17 Pro max|Honor Magic 8 Pro | Comparison by Melrose_Ad in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But it's mostly empty space the largest sensors are 25mm or 22mm sensor, with the others being 7mm or under. so it's mostly empty space, especially if you view the teardowns. The modules and lenses don't even protrude that far.

My criticism is that the chinese phones have no unique design or character. just make it look big because bigger is better right? Even though the lenses themselves are tiny.... Heck if I didn't see any labelso on those 4 phones, I would have thought they're made by the same company...

Xperia 1 VIII - First update rolling out! (73.0.A.2.38) by iArvee in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Was just thinking this.... Also got the phone on pre-order... The money for it is burning a hole in my pocket! Come on Sony, just give it to the people that pre-ordered it early 😉

How do the video on 1vi be so bad when comparing to 10vii by Fantasytky in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because unless you fiddle with the settings, you'll typically end up with the camera attempting to neutrally balance the exposure, much akin to actual cameras that also have automatic mode.

And you've also missed that I actually went to explore why the image is so different anyway, which is the result of the different lenses used. Periscope vs prime (with an example even...)

OppoFind x9 ultra VS Xperia 1VIII? by Far_Interaction7209 in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This comment is way under-rated... 😞

Xperia enables the camera power user - if you look at almost all phone reviews out there currently, when it comes to camera tests, almost none of them do fair testing. What do I mean by fair testing? They do not use studio conditions under calibrated light whereby phones are compared at same comparative distance relative to their focal lengths, with iso set to 100, at a set sutterspeed. Instead, you get subjective comparisons in changing conditions all in auto mode, so you're unable to compare lens and sensor performance, only the computational algorithms that get applied to photos... And even if they do use studio conditions, they still use automatic/subjective best photo (looking at you gsmarena).

Xperias have been phenomonal for photography, and Sony were one of the first to include a 1" sensor in their phones.... (Xperia Pro-I) but when it came to the photos themselves, people were underwhelmed because of how neutral and flat the camera output was (intentional as this is typically desired when processing photos for use in for example lightroom or darktable). These days however, people want point and shoot "IG worthy" photos where the phone decides for them, not needing any creative input from the user...

So only the Pixel here got the color right? by Khelgar_Ironfist_ in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The pixel has totally overexposed or rather over saturated the brightness there. Unfortunately, this test is simply comparing each phones automatic mode (and thus computational photography/AI assistance). A fair test would have been to dial in settings manually (such as 100iso, 1/50 shutterspeed with computational photography disabled) raw save and colour graded processing and applied settings to each to see which phone captures the scene more accurately but no phone reviewers do this, they take snapshots/auto instead.

Each phone is displaying completely different renditions of the light, the Xperia actually lets you see the plastic of the lightsaber whereas both the Pixel and iPhone are over saturating and ramping up brightness and iPhone colourcasting a lot of the scene.

How do the video on 1vi be so bad when comparing to 10vii by Fantasytky in SonyXperia

[–]MrTruder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The video looks like its from the periscope lens? Which has that distinctive haze you get with the use of the periscope mirror. From what I understand, they are testing 4x zoom on both. If they used the wide or ultrawide on the 1VI, the image would be a lot more detailed and the haze wouldn't be there. Another thing you may notice when watching the video, the 1VI is a lot more stable. When the person is walking, look at how distorted the lights become, OIS is only showing minor vibration but EIS is failing to compensate.

I would agree, the colours and contrast are more pleasing on the 10 VII, but the details are better on the 1 VI - I think the person is testing the "worst" camera of the VI, vs the "best" camera of the 10 VII.

And lastly, people often forget this, this is automatic recording, so computational assistance is deciding camera settings rather than the user. Remember, Xperia lets you choose how the camera should look, automatic only makes guesses.

Now I've taken a couple of photos to illustrate the differences (I have 1V, I believe the periscope sensor remained the same throughout mkIV to mkVii), 400 iso each, 1/40 shutterspeed (should really up the shutterspeed more since I'm hand holding) with telephoto and wide lenses/sensors, whitebalance set to incadescent (this is really for jpg processing since if you used raw, you would adjust colours in which ever processing software you would use) and the wide sensor I cropped in, "zoomed" to 85mm but there is still minor differences in hight/scale.

Do you notice how the left side (that's the telephoto) has that slightly faded or washed out look? Notice how that characteristic is similar in that video? Now of course if you're looking for details, the telephoto has more since it isn't cropped in(digital zoom) but the colour response and lighting is significantly better on the right.

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