Sony's Xperia 1 VII aims to be the new king of smartphone battery life

Sony has taken the wraps off its latest flagship Xperia phone, in the form of the Xperia 1 VII, which looks a heck of a lot like an Xperia 1 VI but brings some welcome technical improvements. Above all, it looks like it will cement the excellent battery life enjoyed by its predecessor.

The new phone should now last for two days of regular use, according to Sony, with the 1 VI having already stretched nearly that far if you were careful. That isn't the result of some huge design change to bring in a bigger battery, though – it's still 5,000mAh, but the phone is just a bit more efficient this time around, with a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset at its heart.

Another nice tweak, albeit one that's going to be hard to evidence, is that Sony says it's brought in components from its Walkman lineup of premium audio players for the first time. This means the Xperia 1 VII should be one of the best possible phones on the market when it comes to playing your downloaded or transferred music files to a good set of headphones.

The design of the phone really hasn't changed much at all, with the same look and feel (meaning an impressively premium one, since build quality has always been one of the line's strengths). The camera unit on the back looks similar, but the shooters have also been upgraded.

The biggest of these is the arrival of a new 48MP ultrawide lens, which should bring huge improvements when shooting in that format. The camera software experience also gets a classic 2025 AI twist, in the form of AI Framing to keep your subject in the centre of your frame easily, and a posture estimation feature to keep humans in focus even as they move around.

Low-light performance should be boosted significantly, too, which makes for a comprehensive upgrade, potentially. The shutter button is also a bit bigger this year, to make it more useful.

When it comes to longevity, Sony's also trying to catch up to the market by upgrading its offering. The Xperia 1 VII will get at least four OS upgrades from its base of Android 15, bringing years of new Android features as a guarantee, and six years of security updates as well.

All of this comes with a price tag, of course. The phone, which comes in green, black or purple, starts from £1,399 in the UK and €1499 in the EU – with no US release yet announced.