Sony’s latest Xperia mid-ranger launched on Friday – the Sony Xperia 10 VII brings significant changes to the design while maintaining that Sony feel, plus it features several important hardware upgrades.
The new camera “visor” design may be the most visible change, but the new display is the most important one – the 6.1” panel now has an aspect ratio of 19.5:9 instead of the tall and narrow 21:9 of the Mark 6. It’s also a 120Hz panel (finally!), though we found a lot of issues with this particular implementation.
The new aspect ratio makes the phone a bit shorter but also 4mm wider. In terms of width, the Xperia is now 1.5mm wider than the Galaxy S25 (which has a 6.2” 19.5:9 display). Not that the Xperia and Galaxy are in the same class, but there aren’t many small Androids.
Anyway, Sony still uses the top and bottom bezels to house the selfie camera (still a basic 8MP unit) and front-facing stereo speakers. No notches or punch holes, not even rounded corners – this is a rare sight.
And you know that there is a microSD slot (shared with SIM 2 on units that don’t have eSIM) and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Even the fingerprint reader is on the side, unlike most phones above entry-level. Sony does its own thing.
Sony Xperia 10 VII highlights
A few other notable changes include a bigger 50MP sensor in the main camera (1/1.56” vs. 1/2.0”) and better ultra-wide (13MP 1/3.0” vs. 8MP 1/4.0”) compared to the old Xperia 10 model.
Also, Sony switched over to the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 – it’s not massively powerful, but it’s better than the Gen 1 chip in the 2024 model. Plus, Sony is committed to 4 OS updates (one more than before) and a total of 6 years of security patches.
You can read more about the Sony Xperia 10 VII in our detailed review and don’t miss our video review (embedded below). The phone has only one version, 8/128GB, which costs €450/£400.
Sony Xperia 10 VII 5G
That’s a lot of money – you can easily get a Poco X7 Pro (Dimensity 8400 Ultra), OnePlus Nord 5 (Snapdragon 8s Gen 3) or a Nothing Phone (3a) (Snapdragon 7s Gen 3, 50MP 2x camera) for less.
Xiaomi Poco X7 Pro • OnePlus Nord 5 • Nothing Phone (3a)
The Xperia isn’t available in the US, but the likes of the Samsung Galaxy A56 and Google Pixel 9a are an option. Depending on discounts in your region, several Motorola models are in the running too.
Samsung Galaxy A56 • Google Pixel 9a • Motorola Edge 60 Neo
As always, Sony builds unique phones – there is no mid-ranger quite like the Xperia 10 VII. However, high prices, limited availability and some rough spots in the implementation make Xperias hard to recommend.
Are you interested in the Sony Xperia 10 VII?
