Sony Xperia 1 VIII Announced: £1,399 UK, 19 June Release

UPDATE — 13 May 2026: Sony has officially announced the Xperia 1 VIII. UK pre-orders are open on Amazon from £1,399 (Germany €1,499), released 19 June 2026. Pre-orders include the Sony WH-1000XM6 headphones as a free bonus. Watch the full Sony launch presentation on YouTube.

Pre-order on Amazon UK  Pre-order on Amazon DE

MyMobiles.com was first to publish the CAD-based look at the Xperia 1 VIII, weeks before Sony's 13 May 2026 announcement. These renders are derived from factory CAD data, the same geometry Sony's suppliers were working from — and Sony's official spec sheet (74 × 162 × 8.3 mm) validates our CAD-derived dimensions within 0.5 mm. Below: the launch facts, our exclusive CAD analysis, and the confirmed spec sheet.

These CAD-based renders and the accompanying 360-degree video are a MyMobiles.com exclusive. If you use these images or video, please credit www.mymobiles.com with a link back.

Confirmed at launch: price, specs, and 19 June release date

Sony's official announcement confirmed the Amazon leak we covered earlier and added the details the listing didn't include. The phone is priced at £1,399 in the UK (€1,499 in Germany) for the standalone 12 GB / 256 GB unit. The Sony WH-1000XM6 headphones are included as a launch-day pre-order bonus rather than a bundle uplift. Higher RAM/storage tiers (12/512, 16/512, 16/1 TB) are Japan-only via Sony's SIM-free direct sale.

The 3.5 mm jack survives another generation. Sony has retained the analogue headphone jack on the top edge — Sony is now the only major brand still shipping a flagship with a wired audio jack.

Four colourways at launch

Confirmed Sony specs

Sony Xperia 1 VIII vs VII at a glance

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What changes vs. the Sony Xperia 1 VII

Mechanically, the Xperia 1 VIII is a close relative of the VII — a careful evolution rather than a reinvention. The four changes that matter:

The camera island is redesigned. The VII's vertically aligned strip is replaced with a square-style island housing three cameras plus a flash and additional sensors. The bump stands proud of the body to accommodate the much larger telephoto sensor.

The telephoto sensor is roughly 4× larger. Sony has put a 1/1.56″ Exmor RS sensor behind the 70 mm telephoto, with a matching 1/1.56″ ultrawide. The 24 mm main camera retains its 2-layer-transistor 1/1.35″ Exmor T sensor — Sony's halo sensor across this generation and last.

The continuous-zoom telephoto is gone. From the Xperia 1 IV through the VII, Sony's flagship used a continuous-zoom periscope that physically shifted its optics across a range of focal lengths (85–170 mm on the 1 VI/VII). The VIII drops that mechanical complexity in favour of a single fixed 70 mm lens paired with a much larger sensor, exposing 140 mm only via in-sensor 2× crop. Image quality at the native focal length comes ahead of zoom flexibility — the deliberate trade we predicted from the CAD bump dimensions.

The body is fractionally thicker. The chassis grows 0.1 mm in thickness (8.2 → 8.3 mm) and the width stays at 74 mm. Sony's official figure is fractionally tighter than our CAD-derived 8.58 mm — imperceptible in the hand, but the change accommodates the larger telephoto sensor.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The chipset advances one generation. Sony cites improved on-device AI for the new Camera Assistant and RAW Multi-Frame Processing features.

What the CAD settled: the punch-hole debate

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One of the liveliest discussions in the Xperia community over the past month had been whether the VIII would adopt a punch-hole display, breaking with a decade of Sony flagship design, or retain the symmetrical top and bottom bezels that house its front-facing stereo speakers.

The factory CAD data settled it weeks before Sony's announcement, and Sony's launch confirmed it: the Xperia 1 VIII retains the same bezels as the Xperia 1 VII. No punch-hole. The front-facing camera stays in the top bezel. Stereo speakers remain flanking the display. For Xperia purists who consider those speakers one of the line's signature features, this is genuinely good news.

Release timeline

MyMobiles take

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This was an evolution year for the Xperia 1 line, and the launch confirmed our reading of the CAD data. Sony didn't reinvent the design — it grew the camera footprint to accommodate a 4× larger telephoto sensor, kept the display, bezels, jack, and speakers in place, and shipped Snapdragon's latest. The £1,399 standalone price came in at the upper end of our implied phone-only estimate (~£1,328), and the WH-1000XM6 as a free pre-order bonus is the better consumer outcome — a £400 headphone for zero uplift over MSRP. The Native Gold finish staying Japan-only is the launch's only real miss for UK buyers.

We will track Sony Xperia 1 VIII deals as they go live across UK networks and retailers.