The jokes write themselves 🤦‍♂️

Hej alla.

Är det någon som upplevt samma konflikt som jag. Min nya Xperia 1viii kan inte koppla upp sig för att streama mot mina Phonak hörapparater.

Never thought I'd be making a topic like this but I noticed some changes regarding visibility of the subreddit. The original intended use of this sub was to be more or less just a glorified blog posting site about the Sony mobile devices.

As some people know, I am pretty much a disappointed Sony fan, witnessing the downward spiral from devices with character turning into devices that are just stagnated generic slop, while watching blind fanboys cheering the destruction of the brand on, preventing Sony to realize what they're doing wrong.

I evidently do not stand alone with this sentiment, more and more people seem to find their way here which has lead the sub to catch Reddits algorithm and topics are being promoted to more folks.

Suddenly, the idea that we as Sony fans can potentially reach those half deaf ears becomes a real possibility. Maybe it's no more impossible to get Sony to actually produce a device that is actually worth the asking price.

I want to once again make it clear, we enjoy and love criticism here, whether or not it's positive or negative doesn't matter, you won't get banned because I disagree with you, we are adults here.

I want to thank folks for participating and making this subreddit relevant in the eyes of the Reddit algorithm, maybe our voices will be heard one day, until then, keep doing what you have been doing.

As some people may have seen, there is this misconception that Sony is now apparently doing great and selling phones like bread.

For those who aren't aware yet, here's the article.

Any person that has proper literacy skills can quite easily figure out that Sony is not doing that well and are basically stuck. What's important here is to read between the lines and add the context to the statements made.

Let's get to it:

In Europe, sales are growing significantly due to the strengthening of the direct sales (D2C) channel. In terms of functionality, core fans have been supporting the evolution of the design and telephoto cameras, and the new function "AI camera assistant" has also been popular because the frequency of shooting has increased since using it, and the photo has become fun.

This is pretty much just worthless because the statement is simply that the sales are growing, but to what context is the sale growing? If previously nobody bought the phones but now some are purchasing the phones, that would constitute "significant growth". Also I can't help but wonder if the whole AI assistant statement is a baseless lie or some seriously weird nitpicked statement because the AI assistant has been one of the most memed and critiqued features released yet.

One of the thing that makes me pretty much believe it's a baseless lie is this:

The optical zoom lens of the previous model was also well received, but we received a lot of requests from customers who wanted a higher-quality telephoto. Since the optical zoom lens is difficult to balance with the thickness of the main body, this time we decided to realize 140mm equivalent (about 5.8x) without image quality deterioration by increasing the sensor size to a larger sensor size.

The previous telephoto sensor was hated by pretty much everyone, I have no idea where the idea of "well recieved" even comes from. Even within the absolute copium fanboys the telephoto would at best been described as "not as bad as people think".

If Sony were to actually do better or even good, they would have talked about concrete numbers such as "sales grew 200x from last gen" etc, we see none of it because it's just corpo talk to make Sony seem in a better standing than it actually is. The reality is, Sony phones are still overpriced, barebones, generic, not present in physical stores and completely lack the detail and passion the previous Xperia series had.

A bit late to the dead horse beating game, but still fun regardless. I quite enjoy the voiceover in this one.

Google released the a17 stable update today , when is it expected for the 1 viii?

Another unsurprising disaster.

As I called last year, I was skeptical if they would even release the VIII in Europe since last year sales were not only poor but also had severe cutbacks in Europe, as in, Xperia no longer being sold in physical stores.

This year we see another cutback, European markets have a heavy restriction on the amount of phones sold, pre orders being cancelled everywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtSgIYjjVcg

No Details

Strong oversharpening

Too much contrast

Sometimes, strange colors

https://filebin.net/755o0uh3wdhcft4o

And here we got comparisons, granted these are not full res and cropped, meaning, quality will be impossible to determine, we can however look at the processing style, whitebalance accuracy etc.

We are already at a very bad start. The Xperia has successfully made the model a ghost and did some seriously strange processing with the shadows, she unironically looks like a dead person.

The Iphone is overly green and the Samsung is the least offensive of the bunch. While the pixel did great in terms of white balance and colors, the added red to the skintone does not work well for asian models, which is blatantly apparent.

Classic sony overblown and far to warm. The sony is interestingly also adding a green tint to the image. The pixel did to aggressive HDR and everything looks dull and strange, the Iphone also got whitebalance wrong and looks quite medciore quality wise, the samsung once against the least offensive of the bunch.

Sony has once again a green tint but also underexposed the picture while doing something strange with the shadows again. The Iphone also struggles with the whitebalance, the Pixel once again struggles with skintones. The Samsung shot actually isn't just least offensive, it actually looks good here.

Sony onces again suffers from strange shadows, the samsung struggles with the highlight and the Iphone has a green tint to it, meanwhile the Pixel finally got the scene right and didn't add red to the skin color.

Sony turned her into a plastic doll. I don't even know what to say. None of the other shots are particularly great either but far less offensive than Sony. Here it's a tossup between Pixel and Iphone being the least offensive.

As per usual, the fake bokeh is very unreliable on Sony devices, not only does it look unconvincing, the edge and depth perception are far off, granted the other fake bokehs aren't exactly great either but the Sony version is even worse, somehow.

It really seems Sony is just getting worse year by year, more AI, more slop and more questionable processing. I just don't know where Sony wants to get.

Yep, in Sonys infinite wisdom we are now at such high and insane sharpening levels that we are now adding artifacts as textures. This is the main lens by the way. I literally thought there was no way they could make it worse and yet, they did.

but there is more! Not only does it now oversharpen much worse than previous generation, it will now also denoise a hell of a lot more in low light as well!

The absolutely horrid color science aside that adds a purple tint on the image, this is nothing short of an absolute disaster. I really thought, Sony couldn't get worse with their already awful processing, they have proven me entirely wrong it got so much worse.

The Ultrawide once again same as last year, hella underexposed, huge whitebalance issues, sharpening and denoise issues, way to boosted contrast and inconsistent color science, not much to say as it's as awful as last years and therefore generally inferior to the anchient ultrawide found in older Xperias:

The new telephoto:

And here we go, the new telephoto in action. Telemarco? gone. In typical Sony fashion, you gotta have less. While the telemacro in the previous gen was horribly implemented, at least you had a telemacro.

The new telephoto is based on the same sensor as the ultrawide, but in Sony's infinite wisdom they decided to make it a periscope, unsurprisingly the lens quality is so bad that fringing is quite common.

Here the processing however is completely difference from the Ultrawide:

Much less contrasty. While the sharpness is still to much, it's much less than the absurd amount on the main lens, furthermore the denoise is once again to strong on lower light, ready to destroy every detail you wanted to capture:

Here the question remains, is the telephoto an upgrade?

I'd say yes and no, the processing is the major winner here and not the actual hardware itself. To much fringing going on, the cheap lens construction and quality nuke the image quality requiring excessive sharpening and denoise, however it's still better than previous gens telephoto at native focal lenght, when going beyond that the 'quality' (using the term very loosely here) is equally bad as previous gen, lack of telemacro also sucks.

Honestly GSMarena's take is pretty decent:

Photo quality verdict

The Xperia 1 VIII's performance as a stills camera is good, but somewhat far removed from the best of cameraphones in 2026. We enjoyed the way the new telephoto renders fine detail - it's really something. But beyond that, all cameras lack any wow factor or competitive advantage. All three rear cameras deliver solid images at their native zoom levels in all sorts of lighting, and they do well in close-up shooting as well, but that's about it. And when it comes to zooming in beyond their nominal focal lengths, the main camera and the telephoto leave more to be desired. People's shots, in particular, have middling quality regardless of whether you're shooting other people with the rear cameras or selfies with the front-facing camera.

This take is purposely made to be a 'soft' one, they probably know that all 3 lenses produce at best very subpar images but don't want to say it outright because they know how extreme fanboys react to the cold hard truth.

Something that I do really like is this:

While the addition of saturation and contrast is great and all, what we really needed was an adjustment on noise and sharpness, can't even copy oppo's master mode...

What about display, speakers, battery, charging etc.?

Barely anything has changed, Display is the same old FHD just a bit brighter and by a bit I mean measurably but not notable to the human eye.

Speakers are a bit louder but have less bass. No idea if they downgraded or if it's a tuning thing, regardless, weird choice.

Charging and battery, once again pathetic, 5000mah, slow charging at max 30W.

Another change Sony has made is Multi Frame RAW, which they are late by roughly 8 years. How are the results? I don't know, it could be fantastic, it could be a disaster, given the lazyness and state of the processing and lenses, I'd not put to much hope into it.

Also the marketing..... oh boy the marketing....

Who approved this at Sony HQ? It made the image worse. Is this an ad against AI or something? Is this supposed to be racist?

Is sony taking the piss? There has to be someone actively sabotaging the Xperia department, there is no way this would have reached marketing material otherwise.

On their marketing sony page:

Who the fuck approved this?! WHO?!

Overall, once again another overpriced disaster, while the sensor upgrade was much needed, someone in xperia team did their best to sabotage the phone as much as humanly possible.

To really hammer the point home, here are some side by sides to showcase how talented the Xperia team was in making a large sensor perform bad. Yes the creator messed up with the naming, it's the 1VIII not 1 VII.

So interestingly enough, same warm whitebalance issue as the ultrawide. However here we can see how the Iphone 17 pro max far outclasses the Xperia one in every single aspect. For reference, the telephoto in the 17 pro max is only at 1/2.55".

I don't know what Sony is doing, really, I simply have no idea. This is absolute abysmal, I don't even know where to begin. I take it back, I want the old telephoto back, please.

At least we got Sony AI to help us out with these awful shots they will surely make them better!

Oh fuck.........

I think Sony may be racist:

This is how shes supposed to look like, but sonys processing....

*cry for help*

If this isn't crystal sharp and clear 140mm, then I don't know what is....

You can't make this shit up, you really can't.

I feel there has to be someone in the team that deliberately is sabotaging the team. They finally decided to upgrade the telephoto to a reasonably sized sensor, a whooping 1/1.56" sensor no less, is it competitive with chinese flagships? No, but it's still a respectable size.

So with this exciting news, we take a look at more information and get to the realization that it's only at 70mm, now this seemed disappointing, however I was hyped, I finally thought to myself, wow, Sony finally understood, periscope design is dogshit, it steals light and makes the bokeh garbage, so they opted to go for 'quality over long range'.

Until we see this abomination.

I, am, speechless. The incompetence here is absolutely insane, how the fuck do you build a periscope module with 70mm in a 'flagship' phone?! These clowns literally upgraded the sensor only to ruin it with horrid optics, I can't for the life of me explain this unless there is at least 1active person trying to sabotage the department.

We take a look at the Oppo find x9 Ultra, it has 2 telephotos, one 3x telephoto and one periscope 10x. This is done by people who have a clue on photography, who know that natural bokeh with a non periscope is far more pleasing and superior for portraits, while for long range shots you don't usually need bokeh, especially at 10x zoom.

Sonys incompetence knows no bounds, I'm absolutely speechless.

IMPORTANT EDIT:

This one is coming from Sony's own announcement video, This would mean that the new telephoto is not a periscope and is a 70mm fixed sensor. This is huge news and would mean a massive improvement in telephoto shots, I'm all for it. If Sony doesn't mess up the processing then we got ourselves a solid telephoto experience.

The unfortunate reality is that the Sony Xperia line is on its last legs, we are on May 4th and we still see no reliable leaks or even excitement coming from the fanbase either. The supposed redesign does make sense, not as in an "upgrade" sense but that they want to streamline the phone more to make it as generic and characterless as humanly possible, the camera island now looks similar to other phones such as the Iphones, Oneplus, Motorola and whatnot of the smartphone industry.

More and more apps are being discontinued, for those who do use the Music Pro app, as you know, it will also go soon EOL.

More so, people do speculate a new telephoto sensor in the upcoming Xperia and I do tend to agree. Since Sony themselves lack interest in their own product, I don't see why they would bother creating specialized hardware for the smartphones anymore. My expectations on the matter is that we will see a generic 50MP main sensor and a cheap 50MP JN5 sensor or a cheap Lytia 600 sensor.

Sony themselves have released videos where supposed engineers are talking about their achievements showing off an older device which was supposed to present a newer gen one, not only that but they also messed up showing older renders and calling it the new 1VIII, showing blatantly that they lost all interested in the brand altogether themselves.

Sony tries to hype up their new upcoming flagships however the views really show that nobody cares anymore.

I find it really hard to believe that the exces and shareholders aren't pushing for the death of the Xperia brand.

For those who do not understand what this is about, it's essentially this mod right here.

While I do love when other developers look into new things and get new Ideas sometimes I can only scratch my head. When I start on a project, I typically start asking myself what type of problem I'm trying to solve, this is an important first step to lay out a plan for a solution that can solve a real problem.

Here it seems the developer really hasn't thought it through.

1.) If you want to use 3rd party apps, then that means you don't like the Sony proprietary processing and are trying to get away from it.

2.) Why reinvent another App to basically be another Sony's proprietary processing app?

If the only complaint was that the proprietary app was missing something, then it would be a far better approach to simply modify the proprietary app itself and rename it's package, which would allow people to use the new App with changes without the need of root.

Honestly, it just seems like he's attempting to reinvent the wheel here which makes no real sense to me.

If he wants to continue, all the power to him, but I don't get it personally, seems like a mod nobody really asked for.

hello im trying to know how to unlock bootloader in my xperia z1 compact to install a bit newer os for it because i use it as a mp3/flac player and i would like a spotify on it or if tou know how to download spotify on android 5.1.1 share it pls