Sony Xperia 5 IV review - Smartphone with individuality

Even back when we reviewed the Sony Xperia 5 III, the compact device left us very impressed with its powerful hardware. Sony has now released the Xperia 5 IV, a phone designed to address the shortcomings of its predecessor. The device boasts features such as a 21:9 aspect ratio, an audio jack and an expansion slot for microSD cards.

Sony only offers the phone in one configuration (128 GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM), but it is available in three colours: white, dark green and black.

The Sony Xperia 5 IV is only available with 128 GB of internal storage. Those who need more space will be happy to see a microSD slot that is compatible with cards up to 1 TB.

Sony has placed a 3.5mm audio jack on the top of the device. There is also a USB-C port that supports the current standard (3.2 Gen 1).

The phone has a notification LED in addition to an always-on display. Furthermore, it supports NFC as well as dual SIM (physical SIM and eSIM). Both can be used to access 5G networks.

During our review, the Xperia 5 IV was running on Android 12 with a security patch dated 1 October 2022. The operating system is for the most part stock Android with a few additional features implemented by Sony.

"Side sense" is a feature that allows you to double-tap the side of the screen to show a list of apps in a pop-up window that the phone thinks you may want to use. Moreover, it is possible to open two apps at the same time in multi-window mode and resize each window. These features can be accessed via a bar that you can bring up.

The phone comes with a "Game Enhancer" app that launches automatically when you open a game. A pop-up icon will remain visible when you are playing games. Tapping the icon will give you quick access to display and volume settings, streaming tools and performance mode.

The Xperia 5 IV supports Widevine Level 1, thus allowing you to stream HD contents on the phone. The Camera2 API is at Full support level. Besides apps made by Google and Sony, the phone comes preinstalled with almost no third-party apps other than Facebook and LinkedIn.

We took the Xperia 5 IV together with our reference device (Garmin Venu 2) on a bike ride with us. The Sony phone did a great job mapping out the route, accurately tracking all the turns and bends. However, the phone took slightly longer to establish a satellite connection indoors.

In real-life use, the integrated GPS chip provides quick and reliable navigation in apps such as Google Maps, despite the phone only supporting single-band GNSS.

Sony isn't going after any records in terms of megapixel counts. All four cameras on the phone have a maximum resolution of 12 MP. The lenses on the rear have focal lengths of 16, 24 and 60 mm. The Xperia 5 IV still retains an ultrawide and a zoom camera, but the variable zoom found on its predecessor was dropped this time around. All the lenses have been fine-tuned for the phone in collaboration with ZEISS and are finished with ZEISS T* coating.

The 12MP front camera is an upgrade over the 8MP front camera on the previous Xperia 5. It mostly produces images that are nice and sharp with natural colours. There may sometimes be cloud flare, depending on how the light is falling.

The front camera can record high-quality videos at up to 4K resolution. Image stabilisation is excellent even at the highest resolution. In addition, the phone offers continuous autofocus capable of tracking humans and animals.

Similarly, the cameras on the back are able to shoot 4K videos with impressive sound and image quality. There is no stuttering, and image stabilisation works very well. You can even switch between cameras when recording videos. That said, transitions are quite jerky.

Whilst images shot on the Xperia 5 IV have great colour reproduction, they could be somewhat sharper (especially those taken with the ultrawide camera).

The Sony Xperia 5 IV uses Google's Gboard as its default keyboard. Despite the narrow display, typing on the phone works very well and mostly without any errors.

The display itself is extremely usable and very smooth to the touch. There is a one-handed mode that actually makes the tall display easier to operate with just one hand.

The device can be unlocked using either a pattern, password or PIN. Sony has also integrated a fingerprint sensor into the power button. Unlocking the phone using fingerprints is a remarkably reliable process. The phone will vibrate once to confirm that it has detected a finger, but then it will pause for moment before unlocking the screen. The Xperia 5 IV doesn't support face unlock at the time of this review.

The Sony Xperia 5 IV features a 6.1-inch OLED panel with a 21:9 aspect ratio. Due to the nature of the panel, it managed to impress us perfect black levels and fantastic contrast during testing. The screen also gets pleasantly bright. With the ambient light sensor enabled, we measured a max brightness of 922 cd/m²; the panel managed to hit 603 cd/m² with the sensor deactivated. This means the Sony phone has a slightly brighter screen than the iPhone 14, but the displays on the Pixel 7 Pro, Galaxy S22+ and Edge 30 Ultra can even get much brighter than that.

The panel has even brightness distribution and supports up to a 120Hz refresh rate. Users can also either set the display to always run at 120Hz or let the software adjust the refresh rate automatically. However, you can't manually select other fixed refresh rates. According to the app DRM Info, the panel can only display 60Hz or 120Hz content – other refresh rates are not available.

The display supports 10-point multi-touch. During testing, we detected PWM flicker with frequencies between 120Hz and 475Hz. The flicker occurs over the entire brightness range of the panel, and there is no DC dimming mode. On the other hand, we didn't detect any temporal dithering.

* ... smaller is better

In terms of colour reproduction, the display on the Xperia 5 IV has both strengths and weaknesses. Whilst the colour differences are in the imperceptible range for shades of grey, there are a few issues in the reproduction of colours. Yellow, in particular, deviates significantly from the reference value, and its saturation is also outside the acceptable range, giving the display a slight yellow tint.

That said, you'll only notice this when you compare the screen with other displays. The other phones in the comparison have lower colour differences.

The display is bright enough for outdoor use. And the panel is easy to read even in bright sunlight.

Thanks to the display's wide viewing angle, you can easily make out what is on the screen even when viewing it from very sharp angles. Colours are also properly rendered.

The Xperia 5 IV has great gaming performance thanks to the powerful hardware inside. Even modern games, such as PUBG Mobile, can run flawlessly at max graphics settings. As shown by measurements taken using Gamebench, performance remained stable without any drops in frame rate.

However, the OnePlus 10 Pro (equipped with the same SoC and GPU) delivered 10 fps more than our review unit in PUBG Mobile at the same settings. The Xperia also gets noticeably warm during gaming. But one advantage of the Xperia is that it has well-placed speakers that project sound directly at the player.

* ... smaller is better

Sony has gone its own way with the Xperia 5 IV, starting with the slim chassis with a 21:9 aspect ratio that has neither a notch nor a punch hole. Even though the design doesn't look quite modern with wide bars around the screen, the chassis offers space to accommodate a pair of exceptional speakers. Those who own high-quality headphones would be pleased to find a 3.5mm audio jack. If necessary, you can also place your music or other media collection on a microSD card and insert it into the phone.

The cameras on the Xperia 5 IV aren't going to wow you with high megapixel counts, but they deliver good results, at least when enough light is present. However, images produced by the cameras lack a bit of sharpness, and it's also a shame that Sony didn't put variable zoom on the phone. But at least the Xperia 5 IV has three fully fledged cameras on the back.

The performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is without a doubt excellent. The Xperia 5 IV can handle current games and everyday tasks with ease and is well equipped for years to come in terms of performance. However, the phone does get warm during high load. It is unfortunate that Sony only promises to provide updates for a fairly short period, especially in view of the phone's performance.

Overall, the Sony Xperia 5 IV is a unique phone that goes it own way in some respects.

The phone will certainly win over some fans, but it doesn't come cheap. If you want a microSD slot and an audio jack, other phones will have a hard time competing with the Xperia 5 IV. If your focus is more on processing power instead, the OnePlus 10 Pro may be worth a look because it offers slightly better performance with the same SoC. For more performance, screen real estate and megapixels, the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra might by a great candidate.

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