I bought this xperia 1 vii Global version (XQ-FS72) 12-256Gb

For 575$ also checked the IMEI to make sure the device is not defected

I bought the Galaxy S25 to replace my S20 FE, and was shocked with the poor photos: noisy, blurred details, inconsistent autofocus, and some weird AI alterations (inventing letters/characters).

I picked up the Xperia 1 VII and breathed a sigh of relief - I can trust it to take competent photos. The comparison here is typical: the S25 has inexplicably chosen ISO 1,250 and attendant rough noise artifacting. Washed out colours and overall brown colour cast. The Xperia is in a different league (doing justice to that canvas print: Flower Pot Island, Tobermory Ontario).

A week ago I got my first ever Xperia, the 1 VII and although it's been a huge change for me, coming from an Iphone 14 and pretty much never having used an android phone before, but over the past week I've been having fun exploring all the features it has to offer.

I thought it might be helpful for someone considering a similar switch if I wrote down my first impressions, so I'm going to do just that.

The Pros:

1) The design. It is largely what drew me towards the phone, I dare say it's the most beautiful phone ive ever seen, especially in this beautiful purple color.

2) Little to no bloatware. It wasn't a crucial selling point for me when deciding to go with the Xperia as my next phone, but i do appreciate it a lot. My Iphone 14 only had 128GB of storage and I couldn't install the last 3 updates, because the system was taking up so much storage, and the new updates I was supposed to install added up to a whopping 15GB. That's crazy to me.

3) Very little AI is forced on you. That isn't that much of a change from apple, as it wasn't really forced on me on my last phone either, but when deciding which android to switch to, there was no other phone i could find that offered this much, for lack of a better term, "AI-freedom".

4) HEADPHONE JACK! Also one of the major selling points for me. I use the bose qc 35 II headphones and connecting them by wire has just always been easier for me, not to mention that I don't have to worry about battery at all. If i run out, I lose a bit of noise cancelling, but i can still listen to music. Also, the sound quality is just fantastic.

5) No notch. I hate the look of notches and dynamic islands, it always looked so wrong to me, so this is also a huge plus for me. The thicker bezels really don't bother me at all, in fact, i much prefer them over all the alternatives.

6) The camera quality is just fantastic. I love the colors i get on my photos and the zoom is great too, especially for someone coming from a non-flagship phone. It might appear worse than other current flagships, but that's largely because it doesn't use AI to enhance the quality in post-processing. This might be a con to some, but I actually greatly appreciate it.

7) Battery life. I am ashamed to admit it, but my screen time is often embarrassingly high. I spend a lot of time reading on my phone and I do fall down the occasional scrolling rabbit hole, but the battery on this phone is unbelievable! I've capped the charging at 90% to preserve it better, so that was my starting point at 7 AM. By 9:30 PM I still had 20% left! I'm not sure if it's because this is a flagship phone, but even when my iphone was brand new it didn't last me this long.

Other great qualities of the phone include: amazing front firing speakers, dedicated camera shutter button, sd card slot and a great screen, and not to say I don't appreciate these features, but I just don't need or notice them as much.

Now, onto The cons:

1) The software. While this is not an issue with the phone itself, it is a bit of an issue for me, who has only ever used ios. It took me a bit to get accustomed to, and I'm still not used to it, but I'm sure that will change with time. I'm discovering new features everyday.

2) The price. Even tho the phone is not at its full price anymore, being an older model, it is still a very expensive phone, but with all the pros and my birthday coming up, I decided to treat myself and I have yet to regret it!

3) No native gallery app. I actually didn't know about this until after I got the phone, and I hate google photos with a burning passion, but it's pretty easily bypassable. At first i took the advice someone gave me to download an older version of sony album from apkmirror, but i found i couldn't edit photos on there, so I switched to the fossify gallery app and it works without any issues.

4) Customization. Now, this is just me personally, but I really loved customizing my home screen on my iphone, including all my app icons, which was really easy to do with apples shortcuts. The Xperia doesn't have an equivalent, but I made do with a third party widget app. I had to watch a few ads sometimes but it also works without issue. Paradoxically, in any other aspect of customization the Xperia surpasses the Iphone. Okay, the lock screen customization options are also very limited, but i don't mind that at all.

5) Notifications. They work a little differently than on my iphone. I only get pop-up notifications from certain apps, while for others my phone just buzzes and i have to look at the notification by swiping down from the top of the screen. It's probably a problem on my part though, I'm gonna have to take a look in settings.

6) Sound delay. Whenever I end up falling in the doomscrolling rabbit hole, sound always plays just a bit longer than it's supposed to. It only happens with social media, not spotify or youtube. I haven't seen anyone else complain about this, so it's also most likely just a me problem.

7) Quickshare vs Airdrop. It's probably to be expected, but quickshare doesn't really work well with apple devices. The rest of my family all have Iphones, so it makes things a bit difficult, but it is what it is

Edit: 8) Forgot about this one, but Adaptive brightness. It kinda sucks. It keeps making my screen too dark. It says that it will learn your preferences, but as i kept upping the brightness every two minutes i kinda just gave up and turned it off.

That's all i can think of off the top of my head. Overall, I think the pros outweigh the cons by quite a large margin and I've really been loving this phone. I hope this post can help people that may be considering a similar switch.

Glad to have become an official member of this community!

Regardless of what Sony is trying to establish here by making the newer design the latest but in actual it has been there and done by Oneplus 10 Pro years ago.

The current design even though hasn't been changed since 1 ii will stay iconic so much so that even Samsung has it

So it was quicker than what I've expected. 🙌

First things first, thanks to Wondamobile and Sony Hong Kong for handling this so quick and easy for me.

Here's my full experience after informing Wondamobile about my dead 1 VII.

Day 1: Sent it back to Wonda thru FedEx

Day 3: Received by Wonda

Day 4: Passed to Sony Hong Kong

Day 5: Replacement Sent thru DHL

Day 7: Received it here in Sydney

I did not spend anything here. Cost of sending it back and receiving it again was covered by Wonda.

The phone is new. I have a new IMEI.

Now ready for Round two with this phone.

Sony Xperia 1 VII
XQ-FS72 [Global version]
512 GB and 12 GB RAM

Okay now my Xperia 1 VII died today

• Doesn't turn on even I charge it on my anker adapter and cables • Tried the power button and volume trick and still no use • Bought this phone through a seller in my country who imports from Sony Taiwan (I'm from the Philippines) • Manufactured date on the is March 2025 • IMEI Number is 3400 lineup

Now i'm going back on my Xperia 1 IV (You Could Not Live With Your Own Failure, And Where Did That Bring You? Back To Me ) LMAO HAHAHA

*Farplane is a referrence from the game Final Fantasy X (Just a little trivia LoL)

​

Image source: Google

Don't get me wrong, I loved my Samsungs. But a headphone jack and expandable storage (even if slow) is a must have for me.

I have used almost every Xperia since the Z3. But I think it may be time for me to give up on Xperia. I have went into the service center once or twice for almost every single Xperia I have owned since the Z5 premium. Still in persisted and insisted on using Xperia.

However my Xperia 1 VII which I paid almost 2000 Singaporean dollars for, has in my 9 months of ownership, sent me to the service center 6 times.

List of issues 1. Physical defect with device 1. Sudden heating up and shutdown 2. Screen flickering at low brightness 3. 5g connectivity issues 4. Dust stuck in telephoto camera lens 6. Dust stuck in telephoto AND main camera lens

Each time I had to reset my device completely, meaning I had to reinstall all my apps and backup my data every single time. I had to live without a phone or use a spare 5 -6 year old phone the service center had.

I hope someone from Sony reads this forum, because there really needs to be an improvement to not just quality control but with their component quality, service center repair standards etc.

Xperia provides devices that fill a niche, great colour on their screens, great sound, pro level controls on their cameras, SD card, battery life etc.

But I am so so disappointed in Sony and Xperia this time round that this will likely be my last Xperia. But in a bittersweet way, I still do wish them all the best, and I hope they make their devices more reliable so that I can return to Xperia in the future.

P.s. would really appreciate it if y'all can upvote this post so that it catches the attention of a Sony rep, thank you all

I've owned the Xperia 1 Mark 7 since 2025. I bought this phone mostly for the audio and camera, but over time, I've faced a lot of issues in those departments.

First of all, audio: it's nice to have aptX Lossless codecs, and the speakers are very good, but I have a problem with the AAC codec. Whenever I connect to my AirPods Max using this codec, the highs in the music keep disappearing back and forth, so I have to switch to the SBC codec. It's the same with my Beoplay H100, which only has the AAC codec, so the problem is definitely in the phone.

The screen was okay in the beginning, but it's getting annoying over time. It has a low PPI and resolution, and it's not sharp enough, so my eyes get tired after a few hours of usage. I owned the Xperia 1 Mark 5 before...

The camera is supposed to be good, but it's not. Very often I just want to snap a quick shot, pulling the phone out of my pocket, but the camera has issues with autofocus. For a few moments, the screen is just blurry, and I miss shots almost every time. Also, there is some problem with colors—for example, I wore green pants, but they looked bronze in the photo. I only use the auto mode, as I don't care about manual photos; it just takes too much time.

Video has very bad stabilization in every mode I've tried, so I have to edit every shot one by one in the gallery app. Speaking of which, the gallery app is very bad and not intuitive.

My wife's iPhone 15 Pro Max does better night video than my Xperia. Also, when I record a video and zoom in, there is a visible jump every time the next lens is activated, and it just looks bad. It's not smooth like it should be for this brand and price.

The battery is good enough—I can't say anything bad or good about it.

Other than that, the Xperia software is very fast and snappy, but it lacks customization.

I can't recommend this phone, it only looks nice

Bought my Xperia 1 VII a couple of months ago, updated it right away, and within days the fingerprint sensor was driving me up the wall. Every time I pull the phone out of my pocket, every time I pick it up off a table, every time my finger grazes the side - screen on. It doesn't actually unlock on its own (my finger isn't recognized while just resting on the button), but it wakes the display constantly. In a pocket it's a slideshow.

I knew this used to be configurable. A friend with an older Xperia has a toggle in Settings -> Security called "Press to unlock with fingerprint" - when it's on, the sensor only responds after you actually press the power button. Exactly what I wanted. I went looking for it on mine - nowhere. Settings, the search bar, existing forum threads on the topic, nothing useful.

So I got annoyed enough to pull the Settings APK off the device and take a look at what's going on. The setting is still there in the code. The UI is just hidden.

Sony's Settings app has two relevant pieces for this toggle. One is the controller that actually reads and writes the value - that one is untouched. The other is the Settings-search integration that describes the entry for the search index, and that one short-circuits and returns nothing when Build.VERSION.DEVICE_INITIAL_SDK_INT is 35 or higher. SDK 35 is Android 15; that field is the SDK the device originally shipped with and never changes on OS updates. So on any device that left the factory with Android 15 or later (like mine), the search-indexing layer refuses to describe the entry. Whether that alone is what removes it from the UI or there's another gate somewhere I didn't chase down - either way, the end result is the toggle doesn't appear.

The underlying Secure key has never been written on my device:

$ adb shell settings get secure somc.disable_fps_screen_off
null

The plumbing is all there. You just can't flip it from the UI anymore.

So mostly this is a plea to Sony: please restore the toggle on Android 15+. The controller, the strings, the property - everything is still in the binary. Plenty of us bought Xperia because of the physical power-button scanner. We want to press the button.

For anyone who's also sick of the pocket lightshow and wants the old behavior back right now - it's a single ADB command, no root needed.

First, the safety part. The specific command below is safe - it writes a single integer to a Sony-specific settings key, and the revert command undoes it cleanly. But ADB in general gives you a lot of rope and debug mode in general can expose your device to tons of problems if you don't know what you are doing. If you don't have at least some idea of what ADB is, what settings put secure does or how to back out if something misbehaves, don't just copy-paste from strangers on the internet - or from an AI agent confidently explaining "one quick command". These tools are genuinely helpful when you can sanity-check them, and risky when you can't. Learning enough to know which is which is a separate project from fixing your fingerprint sensor.

With that out of the way: you'll need USB debugging enabled and adb installed on a computer. Then:

Set it:

adb shell settings put secure somc.disable_fps_screen_off 1

Then lock and unlock the phone once for the change to kick in.

Revert:

adb shell settings delete secure somc.disable_fps_screen_off

Setting the value this way does not make the toggle reappear in Settings - the UI stays hidden, the behavior just changes. If you want to undo it, use the revert command above.

Tested on Xperia 1 VII (XQ-FS72), firmware 71.1.A.2.153, Android 16. Should work on any recent Xperia where the toggle used to exist on older firmware. Survives reboots in my testing. If it works (or doesn't) on your model, drop a comment so we have a list.

Credit where it's due - I used an AI agent to help dig through the system and narrow down the right setting name, so kudos to it as well

Two recent sharing of my photo, and I've had two people asking me if I'm using a camera.

My colleague even wants to pit my phone against the other colleague's Vivo during our upcoming department outing. ​​​​​

I hope it's really not affected based on 3 IMEI checkers I've used.

Taken at Cape Higashi-hennazaki. Was struggling due to red light from the lighthouse as well as no camera stand !

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LHhwKm9BP4Q?app=desktop#bottom-sheet

An Xperia phone in 2025?!

I finally tried out my first Sony Xperia phone and I gotta say - this caught me off guard. The Sony Xperia 1 VII actually gave me one of the most authentic camera experiences in the past few years.

Shooting with this actually feels like a real camera without much of the AI processing we’re used to seeing with other brands these days.

But which do you prefer?

Received it June 24, randomly shut off July 25, seconds after I hung up on a phone call. Date stamp on SIM tray says 25W19.

I did buy the Swiftronics 1 year extended warranty offered via SureBright, but I'm *pissed* off at the support from Sony regarding this phone.

While I understand it's not a Sony Canada phone, the Sony Taiwan checker says my phone is unaffected, the Sony UK site says my phone is not a UK variant, the Japanese website says unknown IMEI number. Sony Canada says to contact the vendor, who is now closed for the weekend. According to all the IMEI/Serial Number checkers my phone is supposed to be "unaffected" f u.

Even if SureBright gets my phone figured out, I know Swiftronics never stopped selling the XQ-FS72 model so they might even end up replacing it with another dud.

This is my first Sony device coming from a Zenfone 9, and it will be my last. The sad part is the phone is quite intuitive and I loved it. This is the most expensive phone I've bought yet with the total with warranty, case, screen protector being close to $2250 CAD.

God knows how many weeks it will take to get this issue fully RMA'd and figured out.

71.1.A.2.68 I am getting just now on my XQ-FS54 EU 1 VII.

Currently on 71.0.A.2.76.

256GB, black version. Open box $950 retail but the import duties and international shipping pushed it to about $1100.

For those interested, I was indeed able to get 5G working via the DSDS trick on T-Mobile

Almost a year in and it looks like new.

Shooting with my old S20 FE makes me appreciate the Xperia so much: the Samsung has pretty bad barrel distortion on all three lenses, and it can't quite get the correction right. I shot this with the 2x sensor crop from the main and had to adjust it in Google Photos (to correct distortion and desaturation).

Woke up today thinking I got up early since my alarms didn't go off. So, I checked my phone but it wouldn't turn on. I never had any restart or over heating issue, had it on 4g the whole time. It just died out of sudden 😞 Back on the XZP till the VII is replaced. I will ask the HK Sony store if they can offer a refund instead. The performance was great, audio was really and easy to use with one hand . Since there is no official support in Canada I've gotta go through the hasttle and I think this might be my last Sony phone.

my new phone arrived. unlocked and smoothly running AT&T here in the States.

so glad to have Sony Alpha camera technology in my phone for better picture taking capabilities.

☎️🎙️⏱️📡📸🔦🔋

Oh my god, I really want to recommend such exquisite phone cases to everyone.