Sony Xperia 5 IV review

Sony has nailed it with the Xperia 5 IV (mark four), even if that is a terribly confusing name for a phone.

The company has decided its smartphones aren’t going to be crowdpleasers anymore. It’s got PlayStation for that.

Instead, the Xperia phones are now extensions of the company’s Alpha camera products, with bits of its Bravia TV and Walkman heritage thrown in for good measure. To some, that is very enticing.

This direction won’t appeal to everyone, and that’s OK with Sony. It’s not here to compete with Samsung or Apple, or even Oppo or Xiaomi. It’s just here doing what it, and its hardcore fans, love.

If you want a phone with a superb display, a headphone jack that supports hi-res audio, solid battery life, wireless charging, a notification LED, and cameras that don’t rely on software processing, then this is the phone for you.

Design & build

The Xperia 5 IV is a premium product as soon as you take it out the box, even if the box is made from recycled paper and there’s no charger or even USB-C cable included. This is a good thing for the environment but isn’t a luxurious reveal for what is a very high-end device.

My review unit was a utilitarian (boring) black, though there are white and green version too. The rear matt glass is the best feeling I’ve used on any phone – the right mix of soft but also grippy. This is a no fingerprint zone.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

Aluminium rails add to this lovely feel. They are broken up with antennae bands, a USB-C port, a volume rocker, and a physical power button with a fingerprint sensor built in, the latter still a hugely underrated and underused way of doing biometrics on a phone. I found it very consistently responsive, and better than on the Xperia 1 IV.

Along with this is a two-stage shutter button for the camera. It’s so welcome on a phone like this designed around the cameras, and I miss it when using other phones.

There’s also a headphone jack, a rarity on premium phones these days. The triple camera module on the back is understated in the top left corner, with a textured Sony logo and very faint NFC, Xperia, and other EU regulatory branding on the back.

The phone is slim and tall to the benefit of landscape use more than portrait. My small hands mean I can type (just about) with one hand, but my thumb reaches nowhere near the top of the display. When typing, the haptics are strong and sharp with good feedback.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

Display & audio

The display is a smidge too tall, but the payoff is full screen video in 21:9. Sony is sticking with its decision to differentiate in this way, but it’s great when watching movies, many of which are now shot in 21:9. Watching Guy Richie film The Gentlemen on the Xperia 5 IV was a treat, with the full landscape screen used with no letterboxing or any content cut off.

Many series and older films will still letterbox, but the 6.1in OLED is pin sharp. It’s only 1080p, though the 4K resolution on the larger Xperia 1 IV is overkill. Hardly any apps stream video in 4K.

You can set the display to 120Hz for smoother scrolling, which along with the tallness benefits scrolling through social media apps, fitting lots of fluid moving images and texts onto what is still quite a compact display.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

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This setting is turned off by default, suggesting Sony thinks you can enjoy this phone at 60Hz, and you can. The display is not LTPO, a technology that can conserve power and switch between refresh rates, so if you turn on 120Hz it hits the battery somewhat. It looks lush though, and it’s protected by top-of-the-line Gorilla Glass Victus, as is the back glass, so it should resist scratches well.

Add to that IP68 water and dust resistance and a microSD card slot in a SIM tray you can remove with your fingernail rather than a fiddly pin, and you’ve got one heck of a fully featured phone. This includes front facing dual stereo speakers, which sound full and rich and only distort at the highest volumes and aren’t obstructed when holding the phone landscape to watch video.

The headphone jack is also capable of outputting hi-res audio, which I gladly took advantage of with hi-res files downloaded onto the phone. It also supported hi-res wireless audio though it’s trickier to take advantage of this without compatible headphones or streaming services.

Specs & performance

As of the Xperia’s September 2022 release, the best mobile chip from Qualcomm is the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, but the Sony is stuck with the slightly older 8 Gen 1. This isn’t a bad thing as it’s still a supremely powerful chip that can handle everything I threw at it while testing.

One issue is the 8 Gen 1 doesn’t manage thermals all that well, and several phones we’ve tested with it get hot while charging, including the Xperia 5 IV. The 8+ Gen 1 has much better thermal management, but this phone must have been finalised at the same time as the Xperia 1 IV, which also has the older chipset.

I didn’t find it an issue, and all phones get warm if you fast charge them or use the camera for an extended period. If you’ve heard elsewhere that Sony phones run dangerously hot, that is an overstatement. The 5 IV gets hot under load, but not to dangerous levels. My iPhone 13 mini gets hot when it charges via a cable with the screen off. It’s physics.

In benchmarks, the Xperia 5 IV outperformed the Xperia 1 IV on most test using the CPU Geekbench test and the GFXBench graphics tests.

In (more important) real world use, I had no issues with the 5 IV. It felt very fluid, apps stayed in memory allowing me to switch between them effectively, and AAA games such as Call of Duty Mobile and Asphalt 9 ran without a hitch.

The only version available has 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, though the latter is expandable. There’s only a single SIM slot, but you can add a second line via eSIM.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

Battery & charging

Sony has somehow stuffed a large 5,000mAh battery in this phone, and it has superb battery life. I always got through a heavy day’s use, and never hit 20% before bed. That’s despite shooting tons of photos and video, texting, video calls, and watching videos. Lots of video!

The phone scored an impressive 13 hours and 11 minutes in PC Mark’s controlled battery test. That’s one of the best scores ever for a flagship-grade device we’ve tested, beaten recently only by the similarly priced Asus Zenfone 9. That’s also a smaller than average phone – good work, Sony and Asus.

There’s also wireless Qi charging here for the first time on an Xperia 5 series phone. Rejoice.

Unfortunately, charging is slow at 30W compared to other Android phones in this price range that can top up to 100% in about half an hour. I charged the Xperia 5 IV to 47% in that time.

Camera & video

To get the most out of the Xperia 5 IV’s very good cameras, you will need to know – or learn – how to use manual controls.

Sony has three different camera apps on the Xperia 5 IV, one of which is called Photography Pro. This is the go-to point and shoot camera app that, like every other phone on the market, uses a ‘basic’ mode to capture pictures and then process them with software.

This is called computational photography and phone makers use it in their cameras to make up for the deficiencies of necessarily small sensors in phone cameras. Modern phones pair hardware and software to produce the best image possible.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

Sony’s computational photography has improved markedly over the last three years and the Xperia 5 IV is a solid point-and-shoot in auto mode. Aside from the basic mode, the Photo Pro app also has an auto mode and several manual modes. This is where it gets very manual indeed, and Sony ditches the reliance on software to hand full manual controls to you as the photographer as you would have with a Sony Alpha DSLR camera.

If you aren’t familiar with how to use manual controls on a camera, then you will find the modes baffling and frustrating. I have a Nikon DSLR, but I found a steep learning curve with the deep menus of options and changing ISO, shutter speed, and aperture was daunting. I took tons of awful photos before getting into the groove.

But when I did, I found the phone one of the most rewarding to shoot on. ‘Mainstream’ camera phones like the iPhone 14 Pro or Galaxy S22 Ultra give you a certain amount of manual control, but they also do most of the work for you. Having control over ISO on the Xperia is great fun and allowed me to change the mood of a scene by changing how much light to let into the lens.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

If you know what you’re doing, this could be the most versatile smartphone camera going, along with the Xperia 1 IV. You don’t get that phone’s physically moving optical lens on the 5 IV though, but it’s no big loss. Shots have awesome dynamic range, and the level of detail is the best it’s ever been on a Sony phone, with a very natural look to images that I like. You can also shoot in RAW format if you want to edit photos later.

A rapid shooting mode on the main lens can take 20 shots per second. Other phones cannot do this! It’s another great point of differentiation to capture fast moving subjects. This sensor is also very good at rack focus, which can focus on subjects in foreground or background, and keep the other plane blurred. Apple does this on the iPhone 13 and 14 and calls it Cinematic Mode, but the Xperia 5 IV can do it too.

Sony has used three 12Mp sensors for its main, ultra-wide, and telephoto lenses to successfully keep colours consistent across all three and zooming between lenses when shooting video is smooth.

In keeping with the real camera vibe, Sony labels the lenses 16mm, 24mm, and 60mm in the camera apps. The 60mm telephoto gives great natural bokeh for portrait images using just hardware, but you can add more blur with a software portrait mode too, as you can on the capable front facing 12Mp camera.

All three main lenses support real-time object tracking to keep a subject locked in focus, as well as eye autofocus for keeping people and animals looking sharp. All three lenses can also record 4K video at 60fps in slow motion, which is very impressive.

Videography Pro allows for more granular video controls and you can even live stream to YouTube right from the app. I recorded over 30 minutes of 4K video in the app and the phone got a little warm, but it did not overheat or stop working.

There’s also a Cinema Pro that gives you cinematic video filters and bunch more light controls and readouts. This is a very nerdy camera phone but if you are into it, there should be no other choice (bar the Xperia 1 IV!) for the versatility and function on offer. You can even hook up the phone to an Alpha camera and use the phone as a monitor.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

Software & updates

My main grievance with the Xperia 5 IV is that Sony is only offering two years of Android platform and security software updates. This is far too low for a phone that costs near to a grand – it should be more like four years. It stops me wholeheartedly recommending the phone.

Sony’s Android 12 software is quite plain and close to ‘stock’ Android, whatever that is these days. It keeps out the way and performs well. A software side bar lets you quickly launch two apps in split screen view, which makes sense on a display this tall. I watched football in a (tiny) window at the top while texting friends in WhatsApp.

Sony also includes in its Music Pro app, which recreates a studio recording set up. You can record audio using the phone’s mic or an external mic via the headphone jack. From there, you can use paid-for studio tuning tools to separate audio, de-noise, simulate microphones, and other impressive smarts.

Price & availability

The Xperia 5 IV with 128GB storage costs £949 in the UK and is available direct from Sony or from Amazon, Very, and Clove.

That’s pricy but puts it £150 cheaper than the 128GB iPhone 14 Pro, and £200 less than the 128GB Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. It’s also a better deal than Sony’s own Xperia 1 IV, which costs a crazy £1,299.

The Xperia 5 IV costs €1,049 in Europe from Amazon. In the US it’ll be released on October 2022 for $999.99 direct from Sony.

Verdict

Buying a Sony phone today is quite intentional. You probably won’t be swayed to get the rather specialist Xperia 5 IV if you had your eyes on an iPhone 14 originally.

But if you want a phone that packs in every feature you can think of without compromising on performance, build, or battery life, then this is a great choice.

Considering Sony doesn’t make many different phones anymore, I implore the company to extend software support for phones like the 5 IV – two years is insultingly little time for such a capable device to be considered up to date with modern Android features and security.

Fix that, and I could recommend the Xperia 5 IV to a wider audience than I currently can. If you want a phone from the top drawer with a great screen, headphone jack, and cameras that act like actual cameras that don’t overly rely on software processing, it’s a superb choice.

Specs

• 6.1in 120Hz 21:9 OLED display
• Gorilla Glass Victus (front and back)
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor
• 8GB RAM
• 128GB storage
• microSD expandable up to 1TB
• Rear camera:
• 12Mp f/2.2. 16mm ultrawide w/ dual-PDAF
• 12Mp f/1.7 24mm main w/ dual-PDAF & OIS
• 12Mp f/2.4 telephoto w/ dual-PDAF & OIS
• 12Mp f/2.0 front-facing camera (1/2.9in sensor)
• Stereo speakers
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Dolby Atmos
• High-Res Audio support (wired & wireless)
• 360 Reality Audio (headphones & speakers)
• Dedicated shutter button
• IP68 dust/water resistance
• Dual-SIM (physical and eSIM)
• 5G
• WiFi 6E
• NFC
• Bluetooth 5.2
• 5000mAh battery
• 30W wired charging
• Wireless charging & reverse wireless charging
• Android 12
• 172g
• 156 x 67 x 8.2 mm