Sony Xperia 1 VI vs Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra: who's the camera king?

Design and Size

Bezel, but front-facing stereo

Xperia smartphones continue to hold on to features that many users love, and we’re not criticizing them for it — in fact, it’s refreshing to see Sony sticking to what works. For example, the Xperia 1 VI still includes front-firing stereo speakers, a bold choice that we can appreciate, especially if they deliver great sound. These speakers do result in a bit of a forehead and chin on the device, but they’re not bulky enough to be a deal-breaker — at least, that’s how we felt about last year’s Xperia 1 V.

The top bezel also houses the selfie camera, meaning the screen remains a full, uninterrupted rectangle. That’s something the Galaxy S24 Ultra can’t claim — while Samsung’s flagship offers a stunning display, it has a small cutout at the top for the selfie camera. For some, the Xperia’s design is the more “pure” approach, and we’ve seen plenty of comments from users who prefer it that way.

With its switch to a 19.5:9 aspect ratio, the Xperia 1 VI is now roughly the same size as its competitors. When compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the Xperia is just a little narrower, slightly thinner, and noticeably lighter.

In terms of build, the Galaxy S24 Ultra features a premium titanium-coated frame, a matte-finished Gorilla Glass back, and Gorilla Armor front glass. The Xperia 1 VI, on the other hand, has a textured Gorilla Glass back — a feature that was well-received on the Xperia 1 V — and a ribbed aluminum frame, which offers a solid, grippy feel, as we’ve experienced with previous models.

Lastly, the Xperia 1 VI includes a classic two-step camera shutter button, a hallmark of Xperia flagships, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack — a feature that’s becoming rare in today’s smartphone market, as many brands focus on pushing Bluetooth headphones. But Sony, along with a few others like Asus, continues to keep the jack alive for those who prefer wired audio.

Display Differences

Did you sense a disturbance in the force? It was like a hundred Xperia fans cried out in terror. The Xperia 1 VI drops the 4K display resolution (1644 x 3840) and has a more regular FHD+ (1080 x 2340). Is that a big deal? Well, the 1080p screen will get you a pixels-per-inch density of 396. Samsung’s QHD panel is denser on paper, with a PPI of 501.

In real life? The Xperia 1 VI looks sharp enough — not a huge deal.

Then, we have the aspect ratio — and this year around, it’s the same. The Xperia 1 VI has a 19.5:9 widescreen, so does the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Display Measurements:

Both phones sport OLED technology — well, Samsung brands its panels AMOLED, but it’s the same at the core. Sony has boosted the max brightness of the Xperia 1 VI, now reaching north of 1,400 nits. That’s more than the Galaxy S24 Ultra, per our measurements (this is not peak brightness, which would measure part of the screen for a fraction of time). It's worth noting that the Galaxy S24 Ultra's exclusive Gorilla Armor glass has a very effective anti-reflection coating. So, even with less actual brightness, it appears to "pop" more. But rest assured that both of these displays are legible under direct sunlight.

Both offer a couple of different color calibrations, so you can set them to taste. But the Xperia tends to pull towards colder color casts.

For biometrics, the Sony keeps using a capacitive fingerprint reader on the power button, Samsung has an ultrasonic fingerprint reader under the display. We generally prefer the front-mounted fingerprint reader, since it’s easier to unlock the phone in different situations (lying on a table, mounted on a stand).

Performance and Software

Snapdragon vs Snapdragon, but for Galaxy

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is the go-to processor for Android flagships right now. It’s fast, it’s power-efficient, and it’s built with years of know-how and expertise. Oh, also, with at least some form of partnership with Samsung.

Which is why Galaxy phones get a special “Made for Galaxy” Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in them. It is very slightly overclocked, and it gives us some sort of reassurance that Samsung worked together with Qualcomm to set up the thermals inside the phone.

That said, Asus has proven that it can outclass the Samsung tunings with its own ROG Phones, but we are going on a tangent.

The Xperia 1 VI gets the “vanilla” Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but is this bad?

No, not really. In fact, the Xperia scores a bit more in Geekbench, which measures raw CPU power. It is when we move to 3DMark — a benchmark that does its best to overload a phone graphically — is when we see the Galaxy S24 Ultra pull ahead. Not only that, the S24 Ultra is more consistent as it throttles down, whereas the Xperia's performance gets more erratic.

Of course, this is an extreme scenario designed to bake the phone's internals. In real life, both of these phones feel snappy and responsive. One can argue that the Galaxy S24 Ultra offers more headroom for future proofing and gaming.

Speaking of the future — the Galaxy S24 Ultra also comes with a 7-year software update commitment by Samsung. The Xperia 1 VI sticks to the standard 3 years of OS updates and 4 years of security patches. It's also worth noting that Samsung has been getting better at pushing updates out in a rather fast manner (by Android standards), whereas Sony is still kind of on a "surprise, it's here!" schedule.

Camera

True zoom is cool, but will that be enough?

Sony has been doing the “true optical zoom” thing for a couple of Xperia generations now. There’s an actual physical element inside the phone’s telephoto lens, which ensures stepless optical zoom. In the Xperia 1 VI, that’s between 3.5x and 7.1x (85 mm - 170 mm equivalent).

This is incredible tech for sure, but the results from past models have left us wanting better quality.

Samsung, on the other hand, has two zoom lenses on the Galaxy S24 Ultra — 3x for portraits, 5x as a stepping stone for deeper magnification. And its software work is impeccable — even though Samsung downgraded from a 10x to the 5x lens, its new algorithms picked up the slack and we are generally quite impressed with the Space Zoom here.

OK, magnification aside, Samsung has a 200 MP main camera and gives you the ability to take 200 MP RAW shots with it in manual mode. Sony also bets heavily on pro features in its Camera app and has a 48 MP sensor for its main camera. We’ll see how it compares!

Main Camera

In terms of details, both phones are quite similar. We did a lot of pixel-peeping and could see minimal differences in how each one chooses to sharpen fine details, but it's barely worth noting. For colors — the Xperia 1 VI tends to pull towards magenta-ish casts and dials the saturation the reds a bit high. The Galaxy S24 Ultra pulls towards the greens more — in typical Samsung manner, trees and grass may look a bit neon-ish.

But where they truly differ is in the dynamics. The Galaxy S24 Ultra's dynamic range is excellent, with a lot of detail in both shadows and highlights, giving photos that extra dimension. The Xperia 1 VI kind of disappointed us with a narrower dynamic range and flatter look — a lot of those photos look like the highlights are on the verge of burning.

Zoom Quality

Aside from the issues with dynamics, which we can also spot when using the zoom camera, the Xperia 1 VI also seems to overcompensate here a little bit by adding just a pinch too much sharpening. Though, we prefer the colors of the Xperia here, especially around the greenery.

Ultra-wide Camera

The Xperia 1 VI's ultra-wide camera doesn't seem to always offer the same calibration as the main snapper, so jumping from one to the other can give you a visible effect. That aside, it also struggles with high dynamics — sometimes we get a darker image, as the phone is trying to preserve the highlights. The Galaxy S24 Ultra's ultra-wide camera gives us performance that feels identical to the main camera.

Selfies

Both phones have 12 MP front cameras, but the Galaxy S24 Ultra is better at preserving details, dynamics, and very certainly skintones. The Xperia 1 VI selfies look a bit washed-out and our subjects look a bit yellowish and sickly.

Video Quality

The Xperia 1 VI records nicely sharp video and its stabilization holds it together quite well when you are walking around. However, you can see the S24 Ultra is a bit better at exposing dark areas. When zooming in, the Xperia footage looks shightly more washed out.

Audio Quality and Haptics

Samsung’s stereo speakers sound pretty good. The bass on the Galaxy S24 Ultra is defined, there’s a good amount of mids, and highs are generally not ice-picky. However, since it uses a setup of an earpiece loudspeaker and a bottom-firing driver, the sound does feel unbalanced from both sides.

Sony uses front-firing stereo speakers, which sounds great on paper. But, since they have to be oriented to be front-firing, they don't have as much room behind them, and the bass is not as strong. They still sound fine and detailed, maybe not as loud, but we wouldn't scoff at them.

It’s worth noting that the Xperia 1 VI still has a 3.5 mm headphone jack. If you love your in-ear monitors, you will definitely appreciate that you don’t need to bring a USB C dongle everywhere.

For haptics — we’ve nothing notable to say. These phones click pretty accurately and consistently nowadays.

Battery Life and Charging

With the downgrade of the screen resolution, and the fact that the 120 Hz screen is dynamic and can drop to 1 Hz, Sony promises a 2-day battery life out of the Xperia 1 VI. That’ll be on a 5,000 mAh battery — the same size as on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Samsung’s flagship also has a dynamic refresh rate and a ton of optimizations to save battery. It is quite dependable and will get you through a day for sure, but even with that, One UI itself is quite feature-rich, thus tasks are running and drawing power, and we can’t really call it a “2-day phone”.

PhoneArena Battery Test Results:

They last about the same — nothing surprising for phones that have similar processors and the same battery capacity.

For charging, these phones don’t go nuts with some extreme powerbricks. The Xperia supports 30W wired charging, the Galaxy S24 Ultra maxes out with a 45 W charger.

The charging power shows most difference when you are trying to get some juice in a hurry — smartphones typically charge faster when the battery is empty, and slow down when it fills up, both for safety reasons but also due to how battery cells work. In any case, if you only have 15 minutes to charge, the Galaxy S24 Ultra will juice up to 40%, which is awesome. The same time period will give you 27% — you can still depend on the phone if you enable battery saver and use it sparingly.

But for a full 0%-100% charge, the difference between the two is about 12 minutes, due to the aforementioned charging slow-down.

Specs Comparison

Here’s a quick look at how the core specs compare, but if you want a full sheet be sure to check the Sony Xperia 1 VI vs Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra specs here.

Summary

So, which is the better phone? For Sony fans, the line in the sand is clear — Xperia all the way. Does the specs change feel like a betrayal? We’d say it shouldn’t, as a 4K screen was quite overkill on a 6.5-inch size.

When we are talking value, Samsung really knocked it out of the park this year with a 7-year software update promise. It’s just extra reassuring to know that your super-expensive device will be getting support for a long, long time (also increases resale value).

Now for the bad news — if you are in the States, know that Sony won't be officially selling the Xperia 1 VI in the USA. Yes, you can try and get a model from a 3rd party reseller — be warned that these will only work on GSM networks, like T-Mobile, and do double-check to see that the model you are looking at supports the proper bands.

We'd say it's not worth the hassle — with a price of £1,299.00 in the UK, it'd be an expensive experiment to get an Xperia 1 VI with questionable warranty in the USA. The Galaxy S24 Ultra’s MSRP may be high, but looks like a bargain in comparison.

For the rest of the world — we can say the same. 7 years of software updates, a better point-and-shoot camera experience, and a lower price... We think the Galaxy S24 Ultra is just the better investment.