A Summer in Greenland with the Xperia 1 VIII

24 mm. Midnight in Greenland. The sun does not set, it just slides along the horizon for hours.

I have been using Xperia phones for many years. It's quite a 'niche' phone. And still, every new model manages to surprise me. I always think of it as the phone you did not know you needed.

This article is not an in depth review or anything. I simply tell you about my experience from a photographers standpoint. This is mostly about the photos.

I am a professional landscape photographer and a Sony Alpha Europe ambassador. So I get to shoot with some of the best cameras and lenses in the world. But the Xperia is the one that is always with me. It was with me this summer in Greenland, where I work as a photographer every year. These are my impressions after a few weeks with the Xperia 1 VIII.

The phone

The first thing that stands out is the design. Wow. This is easily the most beautiful Xperia I have ever seen. It has a kind of brushed metal finish and it looks properly futuristic. The camera module got a big upgrade too. The sensors behind the longer lenses are much bigger than before, and that makes a real difference in quality. You see it straight away in the files. More on that in a moment.

The camera module. Three lenses.

Shooting from the boat, somewhere between the icebergs.

05:09 in the morning, and still full daylight outside.

The rest of the specs are solid too. Nothing shocking, just a well built flagship:

• Display: 6.5 inch LTPO OLED, 120 Hz

• Chip: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

• Memory: 12 or 16 GB RAM, 256 GB to 1 TB, plus a microSD slot

• Battery: 5000 mAh, 30 W wired and 15 W wireless

• Main camera: 24 mm f/1.9, 48 MP, 1/1.35 inch sensor, OIS

• Ultra wide: 16 mm f/2.0, 48 MP, 1/1.56 inch sensor

• Telephoto: 70 mm f/2.8, 48 MP, 1/1.56 inch sensor, OIS

• Video: 4K up to 120 fps

• And: headphone jack, IP65/68, 200 grams

  
  

But enough of that. On to the photos.

The photos

Greenland in summer is magic. The sun never really goes down, so you get beautiful light through the entire "night". The icebergs on the water are never the same twice. One drifts away, another one rolls over, and the whole scene in front of you has changed. The atmosphere out there is impossible to describe. This series was shot entirely on the Xperia 1 VIII, and I hope it carries a bit of that feeling across.

16 mm. Dark sky, glowing ice. Icebergs are often very big under the surface of the water!

16 mm. Low sun on a giant peak that looks like a mountain, somewhere around midnight.

24 mm. An arch in the ice, with our red sails boat looking like a toy!

140 mm. The sun just hanging there, refusing to set.

70 mm. The red sails against the ice wall.

70 mm. A green house with the best view in the world.

16 mm. Cotton grass everywhere. Summer in the Arctic.

16 mm. A sled waiting for winter.

16 mm. Low to the ice. The ultra wide is great for this.

140 mm. Scale. That iceberg is not close, and it is still that big. Scenes are like this are just magical in Greenland.

Three lenses, and two bonus ones

The phone has three real lenses: a 16 mm ultra wide, a 24 mm main, and a 70 mm telephoto. The main sits on a 1/1.35 inch sensor at f/1.9, the 16 mm and the 70 mm both use a 1/1.56 inch sensor.

In the camera app you also get 48 mm and 140 mm. Those are not separate lenses. They are a kind of enhanced digital zoom from the 24 mm and the 70 mm. But here is the thing: those photos still look really good. So I have no problem at all using those modes. Half the shots in this article are taken that way.

16, 24, 48, 70, 140. Two of those are enhanced crops, and you would not know from the files.

48 mm. An old boat house. This is one of the enhanced focal lengths.

140 mm. And this is 140 mm. Still plenty of detail to work with.

The longer lenses are the big step up

This is the biggest difference with its predecessors. You see immediately that the longer lens shots have far more detail than on previous Xperias. On the older models I would look at a 70 mm file and think "fine, good enough". Now I look at them and I am genuinely happy with what I get. Those bigger sensors really do something.

The shot below was taken in Bokeh mode, where the phone generates the background blur for you. It does a really nice job of it.

140 mm, Bokeh mode. A sled dog puppy, with the background blur generated by the phone.

The files look natural

The photos look beautiful out of the box. Naturally good, not over processed, and very clean. No crunchy oversharpened look, no HDR that is crazy saturated. Note that I did edit these to my own style afterwards.

I just use Photo mode

There is a Pro Photo mode where you can set everything yourself. But on a smartphone, I hardly ever use it. With my professional cameras I set every single setting by hand. With my smartphone I do the exact opposite. It just has to make a nice photo, automatically, without any effort :D

Final words

All in all I am pleasantly surprised by this phone. It looks incredibly good! And it takes beautiful photos. My gripes are still the same ones I have had for years. The software could be smoother and faster. And the battery could last a good bit longer.

But overall it is great that Xperia still manages to surprise and to innovate. In a market where almost every phone looks and behaves the same, that means something. I am curious to see what Xperia brings next!

If you want to see how the older ones held up, have a look at my article on the Xperia 1 V in low light. It is interesting to see how far this line has come.

Thanks for reading as always!

Albert