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Introduction
Sony's newly revamped smartphone lineup revolves around the digit 1 - there's the flagship Xperia 1 that's not quite ready for prime time and the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus in the midrange, the two very much in stores as we speak. We had a closer look at the 10 Plus recently, and now it's the smaller 10's turn.
Much like the other 1s, the Xperia 10 sports a 21:9 aspect display - Sony sees this as the future of smartphones and is keen to take us there. The 10's 6-incher still has FullHD+ resolution, so it's got as many pixels as the 10 Plus, but comes with a few sacrifices compared to the larger model.
Chief among those is the chipset - the Snapdragon 636 in the 10 Plus is a bit underpowered, and the Xperia 10 comes with the less exciting S630. A gig less RAM than the Plus's 4 and a depth camera on the 10's back as opposed to the Plus's telephoto shooter are a couple of the more obvious differences, but there are other ones hidden from plain sight - take out the card tray and you'll see a shared slot for the second SIM and memory card, where the Plus had dedicated slots for all three.
Sony Xperia 10 specs
- Body: Plastic unibody with "metallic finish"; Gorilla Glass 5 on front; 155.7 x 68 x 8.4 mm; 162 grams; Black, Navy, Silver, Pink color options.
- Display: 6.0" IPS; 21:9 aspect ratio; FullHD+ (1080x2520px), 457ppi density.
- Rear cameras: Primary: 13MP (1/3"). Secondary: 5MP (1/4") depth sensor. Hybrid AF, SteadyShot, ISO 12800 for photos and 3200 for videos; 4K (16:9 or 21:9); SteadyShot.
- Front camera: 8MP (1/4"), ISO 3200 for photos and 1600 for video.
- Chipset: Snapdragon 630 chipset, octa-core processor (8x2.2 GHz Cortex-A53), Adreno 508 GPU.
- Memory: 3GB/4GB (in China) of RAM + 64GB storage; up to 512GB microSD card support.
- OS/Software: Android 9.0 Pie.
- Battery: 2,870mAh Li-Ion; Smart STAMINA, Battery Care.
- Connectivity: Dual-SIM/ Single-SIM options available (market dependant); Cat.12 LTE; USB 2.0 Type-C; Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac; GPS + GLONASS; Bluetooth 5.0; NFC; 3.5mm audio jack.
- Audio: Single bottom-firing speaker, DSEE HX, LDAC, Smart Amplifier.
- Misc: Side-mounted fingerprint reader.
The Xperia 10 does keep the selfie camera of the Plus - the segmentation only goes so far. The smaller phone also has the same unibody design as the 10 Plus, complete with the side-mounted fingerprint sensor - it's physically much the same phone, only smaller. We'll talk more about that in a minute, but let's first go over the retail package.
Sony Xperia 10 unboxing
The Xperia 10 we have for review comes in a plain white box with the phone's name stamped on it in gray. While the box itself is representative of what you'll find in the store, the contents aren't necessarily so. Sony bundles vary by region and carrier so asking before buying wouldn't hurt.
What we got was a plain 5V/1.5A charger and a USB-A-to-C cable to go with it. The phone is Power Delivery capable and Sony does make a PD charger, which could possibly make it to the box in some markets, though we wouldn't count on it. A bit more likely is that you'll find a set of earbuds in the box - again, not in all markets, but some will get those.
Design and 360-degree view
Having already had the chance to meet the Xperia 10 Plus, the 10's proportions no longer strike us as unusual as much. Dare we say, it's an ordinary looking phone?
No, that's not really the case. Just because the Xperia 10 is slightly smaller with its 6-inch display versus the Plus's 6.5-inch one doesn't make it any more orthodox. No wonder - it's one of two devices currently on the market with a 21:9 aspect display (the other is obviously the 10 Plus), with the Xperia 1 set to arrive sometime this summer.
So thanks to the smaller display and the novel aspect, the Xperia 10 is both a really tall phone, and also a compact phone. It's narrower than a Pixel 3 and a Galaxy S10e, so it's easier to reach across to the other side, and it's also easy to slip into a pocket. It will, however, stick out a little from the top of that pocket and likely remind of itself when you're climbing stairs, for example.
Part of that comes from the fact that in addition to the already elongated display, the Xperia 10 has a sizeable top bezel making the overall proportions even more exaggerated. On a positive note though, because it's that bit smaller, it doesn't have that top-heavy feel of the Plus and you're less likely to feel like it's trying to escape from your hand by diving forward.
Make no mistake, however - it's just as slippery as the bigger one. The metal finish on the otherwise plastic unibody looks almost like the real deal, but if anything, it's even less grippy than the actual metal-backed alternatives. We had all four colors at the office at one point and, as is often the case, we're leaning towards the blue one as our favorite.
The back is kept clean with the dual camera Wall-E-lookalike assembly sticking out by just a hair - certainly not as much as on the Plus. One can point out that there's both a Sony and an Xperia logo - back in the day it was Sony on the front, Xperia on the back, but there's no longer room on the front.
There was no room for the Sony logo on the front as now there's a lot of display there. The 21:9 6-inch panel has minimal bezels on three sides, with more non-display only on top. That means no notches and all of the things we've come to expect to be found in the top bezel - earpiece, selfie camera, ambient light, and proximity sensors, and a notification LED. That could have come off a bit retrograde - we're not against bezelless by any means, and we're not strictly fans of the Xperia's forehead, but let's just call it a reasonable compromise.
Compromise is what Sony's done with the fingerprint sensor. A legal issue in the US has been leaving US-bound Sonys with no fingerprint recognition on the models where the readers have been on the side within the power button. So the two functions have been decoupled this year, and the Xperia 10 has a separate fingerprint reader a separate power button.
The fingerprint reader works like a charm, it's placed right where it should be and it's not too discriminating about whether you're a right-hand or left-hand user. Perhaps some extra care should be taken when enrolling the left index finger so that you register the right bits of it, but we didn't find it to be an issue.
More unpleasant was our experience with the power button and the volume rocker as both are too small and have little travel and overall mushy click action. And that's in addition to the fact that it's a bit hard to get used to unlocking the phone with the fingerprint reader but locking it by pressing on a different spot which is the power button. Other than that, the placement of the controls makes sense.
Not quite so with the card slots. We praised the Xperia 10 Plus for its dedicated microSD slot, and we expected to find one on the vanilla 10, but no. You pull out the cover and this would bring out the SIM 1 tray, while the SIM 2/microSD goes into a separate tray. Go figure.
There's not much to figure down on the bottom - the USB-C is in the center with the loudspeaker on the right and the microphone on the left.
Up top there's a headphone jack and a secondary mic for noise cancellation.
The Xperia 10 measures 155.7 x 68 x 8.4mm, which makes it substantially more compact than potential competitors like the Galaxy A7 (2018), Moto G7, Mi 8 Lite and Huawei P smart 2019, though all of these do indeed have bigger displays. Even so, the Xperia is 5 to 9mm narrower than them, and as tall or shorter, making it an easy choice if pocketability is paramount.
The Xperia 10 is also one of the lighter phones in this group with its 162g, though even the heaviest Moto G7 won't be too big of a burden with its 175g.
21:9 aspect in a compact phone
The Xperia 10, along with its Plus stablemate, has a 21:9 aspect display. The vanilla 10 is a lot more pocketable though, thanks to its 6.0-inch diagonal. It may be smaller, but the resolution is still 1080x2520px, making for a higher 457ppi density compared to the 10 Plus's 422ppi. Again, there are no cutouts in the display (yay!), just the ever so slightly rounded corners.
We measured a maximum brightness of 549nits - a little short of the 10 Plus's 583nits, but still above average for the class. There's no boost when the Adaptive brightness toggle is turned on. Thanks to reasonably little illumination when displaying black, the Xperia achieves a pretty good contrast around 1500:1.
On the far left end of the slider we measured 5.5nits, which is acceptable for reading in very dark environments without straining your eyes.
| Display test | 100% brightness | ||
| Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | ||
| 0.362 | 549 | 1517 | |
| 0.381 | 583 | 1530 | |
| 0 | 402 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 602 | ∞ | |
| 0.315 | 493 | 1565 | |
| 0.322 | 468 | 1453 | |
| 0.325 | 437 | 1345 | |
| 0.344 | 441 | 1282 | |
| 0 | 429 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 435 | ∞ | |
| 0.313 | 460 | 1470 | |
| 0.377 | 490 | 1300 | |
| 0.465 | 600 | 1290 | |
We didn't experience much trouble using the phone outdoors and it remained legible in all but direct sunlight, though you'll want to wipe the smudges off the glass for a better experience.
As we encountered on the 10 Plus, there are two tiers of color settings on the Xperia 10 - 'Color gamut and contrast' and 'White balance'. The first one lets you choose between Standard and Super-vivid modes of color enhancement as well as letting you keep the enhancements off. 'White balance' then lets you choose between Warm, Standard, and Cool color temperatures or you can dial in your own RGB values with the sliders.
None of the modes makes any claims for accuracy, and after our experience with the 10 Plus, we didn't expect much in this area. In the Off mode, we measured an average DeltaE of 5.0 and a maximum of 9.3 when aiming for sRGB reproduction, with whites heavily shifted towards blue. While not particularly accurate, it's still better than what the out-of-the-box Standard setting gave us - average DeltaE of 6.1 and a maximum of 13.6, while in Super-vivid those values were 6.9 and 14.1. We tried the image enhancement modes against AdobeRGB and DCI-P3 targets but there was no match. Setting the White balance to 'Warm' didn't dramatically improve things, while 'Cool', predictably, was very blue.
We were able to achieve a much more faithful representation of the sRGB color space with the 'Color gamut and contrast' set to Off, and the RGB sliders at R255, G138, B0 - with those settings we measured an average DeltaE of 2.3, with the whites much closer to the target and noticeably less blue.
Display color settings
Sony Xperia 10 battery life
The Xperia 10 is equipped with a 2,870mAh battery, a slightly smaller capacity than the 10 Plus's 3,000mAh power pack. Most competitors have bigger batteries, though in all fairness the Xperia's screen is one of the smallest around - by area, which is what counts. The Galaxy A7 (2018), Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite and Huawei P smart 2019 are in the 3,300-3,400 ballpark, while the Moto G7 is closest to the Xperia with its 3,000mAh battery.
The Xperia posted unimpressive endurance results in our testing, some of the lowest in its class. We clocked 8 hours of looping videos in airplane mode and 8:42h in our Wi-Fi web browsing test, with most phones mentioned above exceeding 10 hours in either test, the Galaxy in particular by a lot. Only the Moto G7 couldn't make it to 10 hours in video, but its 9:05h score is still better than the Xperia's. The 18 hours of 3G voice calling that the Xperia 10 is capable of are similarly below average, though not as important in our book.
The overall Endurance rating then works out to 65 hours.
Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSer App. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Sony Xperia 10 for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.
We weren't super excited about the bundled 5V/1.5A charger, but it still does a better-than expected 0-to-100 time of 2:11h with 30% showing on the battery indicator at the 30-minute mark. An 18W power delivery adapter is able to get you to a much better 50% in half an hour, with a full charge taking 1:53h. We measured this with a Pixel charger, but you can expect similar results if using Sony's own 18W PD unit - whether you get lucky and have it bundled, or buy it separately.
Loudspeaker
Much like its bigger Plus brother, the Xperia 10 has a single, bottom-ported loudspeaker - it's the grille to the right of the USB-C port while the left one is just a mic.
Single as it may be, it's plenty loud and made it into the Excellent bracket in our three-pronged test. We measured a slightly lower output in one of the tracks, when comparing to the 10 Plus, but even so it was of the higher readings in that particular test, so no worries. For all its loudness, the Xperia's speaker is pretty lacking in the lower frequencies - don't expect much bass from it.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing |
Overall score | |
| 69.4 | 70.9 | 79.9 | Very Good | |
| 67.1 | 72.9 | 81.6 | Very Good | |
| 65.0 | 74.1 | 83.6 | Very Good | |
| 67.5 | 77.8 | 77.6 | Very Good | |
| 70.2 | 71.9 | 84.6 | Very Good | |
| 69.5 | 73.6 | 86.0 | Excellent | |
| 68.7 | 73.0 | 87.8 | Excellent | |
| 70.0 | 73.8 | 87.0 | Excellent | |
| 69.8 | 71.5 | 90.5 | Excellent | |
| 68.5 | 73.2 | 90.7 | Excellent | |
| 75.6 | 76.0 | 81.1 | Excellent |
Audio quality
The Sony Xperia 10 gets excellent marks for clarity in the active external amplifier part of the audio quality test. It did very well with headphones too - with the moderate spike in stereo crosstalk all the degradation you get.
Yet, much like its Plus sibling, the Xperia 10 came short of the competition when it comes to loudness. The smaller of the two Sony midrangers has a slightly higher volume than the bigger one, but not enough to lift it above the below average bracket.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.04, -0.04 | -92.2 | 91.9 | 0.0032 | 0.015 | -97.1 | |
| +0.05, -0.03 | -96.1 | 91.6 | 0.0033 | 0.024 | -56.4 | |
| +0.01, -0.08 | -92.4 | 88.5 | 0.0044 | 0.016 | -96.7 | |
| +0.06, -0.02 | -96.3 | 89.4 | 0.0043 | 0.020 | -57.8 | |
| +0.04, -0.00 | -93.3 | 93.2 | 0.0029 | 0.0077 | -93.8 | |
| +0.07, -0.01 | -92.9 | 93.2 | 0.015 | 0.076 | -68.8 | |
| +0.04, -0.04 | -90.7 | 90.7 | 0.0015 | 0.014 | -94.5 | |
| +0.05, -0.29 | -92.5 | 92.5 | 0.024 | 0.296 | -55.0 | |
| +0.02, -0.02 | -93.1 | 93.0 | 0.0039 | 0.0088 | -81.9 | |
| +0.64, -0.38 | -88.6 | 91.9 | 0.0069 | 0.606 | -50.6 | |
| +0.01, -0.04 | -92.3 | 92.4 | 0.0041 | 0.0085 | -80.7 | |
| +0.45, -0.54 | -92.2 | 92.8 | 0.0084 | 0.492 | -51.5 |
Sony Xperia 10 frequency response
You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.
Vanilla Android Pie
The Xperia 10 boots Android Pie, and as we observed on the 10 Plus, this is a variation that stays closer to Google's own implementation than what we saw on the Xperia XZ3 last year. That's most obvious in the option to use the pill navigation (which Sony calls 'Swipe up on Home button') in addition to the classic nav bar. You can find the setting in the display menu, and enabling it makes the Xperia behave almost precisely like a Pixel phone.
Swipe up setting • Homescreen • App drawer • Folder view • Notification shade
There are unique Xperia bits on top, however - ones that are meant to help out with the tall aspect of the display. This smaller model is naturally easier to operate single-handedly than the Plus, but even so, the notification shade is pretty far up - one-handed mode to the rescue!
It's not a new thing, but we've grown to appreciate it on these 21:9 Xperias more than we used to on previous occasions. A quick double tap on the Home button shrinks the entire UI to one of the bottom corners and makes the notification shade conveniently reachable with one hand - good luck with that on the full-screen UI.
One-handed mode
Then there's Side Sense - a custom drawer-like interface that can be triggered by tapping twice on a handle located on the side of the screen. You can move the handle up and down, adjust its size, and have it on either side or both sides. The menu itself is sort of a take on the Android Pie recent apps interface, which is notably missing from its intended location as a row in the app drawer. You can disable the handle from showing up over apps on a per-app basis, or you can turn off side sense entirely.
Side sense
An inherent benefit of an extra long display is the ability to show more items in long lists - that includes boring stuff like the settings menu, and marginally more fun stuff like, say, Instagram. The benefits aren't at as great on the 10 as on the 10 Plus, because of the slightly different scaling and text fit, but there still are gains.
Another good use for a 21:9 screen is showing two apps in two larger-than-average halves of the said screen. The thing is that with Pie Google introduced much clumsier mechanics for going into multi-window and it affects all phones who adopt it.
There's a downside to the unusual aspect too, in that some apps may not be able to display properly in it. We ran into this with one of the benchmarks we do, but not the more common apps you're likely to use. Even so, the possibility for incompatibility is there.
Settings • Instagram (0.5 extra row) • Multi- window • and in landscape • Incompatible app
Sony also notably handles its own multimedia display and playback. Album features both photo and video support, can connect to the cloud and local network services and is pretty good at organizing galleries and doing the occasional light edit on a shot.
The Music app is simple and well organized, without lacking any important features. All the while, it looks very appealing with large format album art (and automatic art download) and a flat design. It also features Google cloud integration. There are also various options to tweak sound including the DSEE HX up-scaler and the Automatic optimization which work with wired headphones. Others, like aptX HD, are compatible with Bluetooth devices.
Album app • Photo Editor • Music app • Audio settings
Synthetic benchmarks
The Xperia 10 has the Snapdragon 630 inside doing the number crunching, a familiar midrange chipset. Perhaps a little too familiar - it's been around since the fall of 2017 and, as was the case with the 10 Plus, we'd have liked to see a newer/faster chip powering the 10.
Anyway, the Snapdragon 630 has an octa-core 2.2 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU and the Adreno 508 GPU inside. The Xperia 10 can be had with 4GB of RAM in China and 3GB in the rest of the world, and we got the ROW package. Storage is 64GB regardless.
The Xperia 10 is off to a pretty bad start already in GeekBench, posting a slightly lower score than other phones with the same chipset in the multi-core test. And then higher-grade chips are even speedier, of course. Under single-core loads, the Xperia's numbers are closer to other S630-equipped rivals, but still that several points behind.
GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)
Higher is better
- Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite
5894 - Nokia 7 plus
5893 - Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018)
5763 - Honor 8X
5651 - Huawei Mate 20 Lite
5574 - Nokia 7.1
4975 - Motorola Moto G7 Plus
4927 - Sony Xperia 10 Plus
4780 - Motorola Moto G7
4755 - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018)
4446 - Nokia 6 (2018)
4225 - Sony Xperia XA2
4215 - Motorola Moto X4
4136 - Sony Xperia 10
3985
GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)
Higher is better
- Nokia 7 plus
1634 - Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite
1628 - Honor 8X
1618 - Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018)
1611 - Huawei Mate 20 Lite
1595 - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018)
1524 - Nokia 7.1
1344 - Sony Xperia 10 Plus
1340 - Motorola Moto G7 Plus
1334 - Motorola Moto G7
1255 - Nokia 6 (2018)
882 - Motorola Moto X4
866 - Sony Xperia XA2
865
848
The less than stellar run continues into Antutu, where the Xperia 10 is trailing behind key rivals with even the S632-packing Moto G7 posting some 20% higher scores. Predictably, the phones with more powerful chipsets than that are way out of reach of the Xperia.
AnTuTu 7
Higher is better
- Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite
143257 - Nokia 7 plus
140820 - Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018)
140500 - Honor 8X
137276 - Huawei Mate 20 Lite
136583 - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018)
123883 - Sony Xperia 10 Plus
120573 - Motorola Moto G7 Plus
117829 - Nokia 7.1
117175 - Motorola Moto G7
106292 - Nokia 6 (2018)
90918 - Sony Xperia 10
89697
It's not exactly like the Xperia is any better in the graphics department, where its Adreno 508 is struggling with the FullHD resolution of the display. In the offscreen tests, it posts similar fps numbers as the other S636 devices, which are predictably behind the Snapdragon 660s of this world.
GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better
- Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite
15 - Nokia 7 plus
15 - Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018)
15 - Huawei Mate 20 Lite
14 - Honor 8X
14 - Sony Xperia 10 Plus
10 - Motorola Moto G7 Plus
10 - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018)
10 - Nokia 7.1
10 - Nokia 6 (2018)
9.9 - Motorola Moto X4
9.8 - Sony Xperia 10
9.6 - Sony Xperia XA2
9.6 - Motorola Moto G7
6.9
GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Nokia 7 plus
14 - Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018)
14 - Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite
13 - Huawei Mate 20 Lite
13 - Honor 8X
13 - Motorola Moto X4
11 - Sony Xperia XA2
10 - Nokia 6 (2018)
10 - Motorola Moto G7 Plus
9.7 - Nokia 7.1
9.7 - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018)
9.4 - Sony Xperia 10 Plus
8.4 - Sony Xperia 10
7.8 - Motorola Moto G7
6.4
GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better
- Nokia 7 plus
9.1 - Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018)
9.1 - Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite
9 - Huawei Mate 20 Lite
7.6 - Honor 8X
7.6 - Sony Xperia 10 Plus
6.3 - Motorola Moto G7 Plus
6.3 - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018)
6.3 - Nokia 7.1
6.3 - Nokia 6 (2018)
5.6 - Sony Xperia XA2
5.5 - Sony Xperia 10
5.4 - Motorola Moto X4
5.3 - Motorola Moto G7
3.8
GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Nokia 7 plus
8.6 - Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018)
8.3 - Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite
8 - Huawei Mate 20 Lite
6.7 - Honor 8X
6.7 - Sony Xperia XA2
6 - Nokia 6 (2018)
6 - Motorola Moto G7 Plus
5.9 - Nokia 7.1
5.9 - Motorola Moto X4
5.8 - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018)
5.7 - Sony Xperia 10 Plus
5 - Sony Xperia 10
4.3 - Motorola Moto G7
3.5
As we said when looking at the Xperia 10 Plus, the Xperia 10 comes off as underpowered for its price range. Both new and old devices can be had for the same money while offering superior performance.
Dual camera on the back
The Xperia 10 has a different camera setup compared to the one on the Plus and it goes beyond replacing the telephoto with a depth sensor - the main camera is different as well. The vanilla 10 has a 13MP sensor as opposed to the 12MP one of the 10 Plus, but it's a smaller sensor with tinier pixels - 1/3" and 1.12µm vs. 1/2.8" and 1.25µm. The lens has the same focal length at 27mm equivalent, but it's slightly dimmer - f/2.0 aperture vs. the Plus's f/1.8.
Where the Xperia 10 Plus has an 8MP telephoto camera, the Xperia 10 has a depth-only module with a 5MP 1/4" sensor.
The camera UI is identical to the one we're familiar with from the XZ3 - with just one standalone camera, there's no need for the 1x/2x toggle of the 10 Plus. There are dedicated viewfinders for stills and video and extra modes behind a mode button. In the stills mode viewfinder, you have settings for flash, self-timer, aspect, basic white balance, and exposure compensation. There's also a toggle to switch between front and read cameras, but you can do that more easily with a swipe on the screen.
As on the Plus, we can't fail to mention that the UI doesn't rotate 180 degrees if you're holding the phone in landscape with your left hand. It's a remnant of the times when there was a physical shutter release button and consequently a right-side-up. Perhaps the software engineers will eventually get to it, seeing as how these Xperias are the first in a long time without a shutter button.
As usual, there's a Manual mode, where you get to tweak exposure parameters yourself. It's not the most full-featured - white balance, for example, can only be set to one of four presets, but not by light temperature. ISO range is 50-3200, while shutter speed can be set between 1/4000s and 1s. You can dial in exposure compensation in the -2/+2EV in 1/3EV increments and you can also focus manually, but there's no focus peaking.
Camera UI
Image quality
The Xperia 10 takes decent daylight images with good detail and sharpness. There's some noise when looking up close, but the 10 isn't the worst offender in this area. It does, however, produce overly saturated colors with a noticeable yellowish warm cast.
Camera samples, regular camera
There's also the narrow dynamic range, which you cannot combat with HDR processing in the full auto mode. You do get a toggle for that in manual mode and with HDR off, the shots turn out identical to those in auto mode, regardless of the scene, indicating that it doesn't bother applying Auto HDR in auto mode. The Backlit scene mode that it does engage isn't remotely that, evidenced not only by the photos but also the difference in processing time that actual HDR shots require on the Xperia 10.
With HDR turned on in manual mode, however, you do get significantly improved results in terms of dynamic range, with images viewed at fit to screen magnification having much better-developed shadows and highlights. However, there's also a substantial sharpness penalty with HDR shots being noticeably softer than non-HDR ones.
HDR scene: Auto mode • Manual mode, HDR off • Manual mode, HDR on
Low-light photos from the Xperia 10 are largely unimpressive and are best characterized by their overall softness, the absence of fine detail and limited dynamic range. Having said that, disappointing low-light performance is practically the norm in the midrange, so the Xperia doesn't really stand out in a bad way here.
Camera samples, low light
Once you're done looking at real-life samples, don't forget to head over to our Photo compare tool to check out how the Xperia 10 deals with our studio charts.
Xperia 10 against the Galaxy A7 (2018) and the Moto G7 in our Photo compare tool
The Xperia 10 takes portraits with blurred backgrounds thanks to its secondary depth camera. Unlike the 10 Plus where the shot was taken with the telephoto camera, the 10 takes it with the regular one (due, in no small part, to the obvious lack of a telephoto). The point is, with the Xperia 10's setup headshots need to be taken from up close making for a less flattering perspective. The flipside is that you'd be getting overall better image quality, particularly in dim light, but also in good light.
The algorithms' pickiness about the subject's distance remains, however, and we often struggled to get it just right. Which is weird, because the phone will take a perfectly good-looking portrait shot even if it was giving instructions to move closer or further when you were taking it.
Portraits have good subject separation and natural-looking background blur rendering. They're also easily as sharp in the in-focus areas as regular photos, so you're not sacrificing sharpness for bokeh.
Bokeh samples, people
Bokeh samples, non-human subjects
8MP selfies
The Xperia 10 shares the front-facing camera with the 10 Plus and the 1. It's an 8MP 1/4" sensor with 1.12µm pixels behind a 24mm-equivalent lens with an f/2.0 aperture.
The selfies turn out alright in ideal lighting with good detail and skin tones. However, in even moderately dimmer indoor scenes you can expect a rapid drop in sharpness and increase in noise.
Selfie samples
Portrait selfies are on par with other single-cam fixed-focus efforts from competitors, which is to say anything but flawless. With the right combination of subject and background you could achieve some nice results. Portraits do end up consistently softer than regular selfies, mind you.
Portrait selfies
Video recording
The Xperia 10 records video up to 4K resolution at 30fps, with 1080p resolution at 30 and 60fps available as well. There's also a 21:9 mode where you can record in the phone's native aspect at 3840x1644px.
4K videos are encoded at around 55Mbps, which is a little higher than average. 1080p/60fps footage gets 30Mbps flat, while 1080p/30fps is treated to 17-17.5Mbps. Audio is recorded in stereo and gets a 156kbps bit rate regardless of video mode.
Starting off on a positive note, the videos from the Xperia 10 don't suffer from the patterned artifacts in areas of solid color that we observed in Xperia 10 Plus footage. However, the 10's clips, regardless of resolution and frame rate, and much like its stills, have a pronounced warm yellowish color cast - something we didn't see on the 10 Plus.
Having said that, the Xperia 10's 4K videos are as sharp as the ones from the 10 Plus (meaning very sharp) and dynamic range is similarly very good. The same applies to 1080p footage which is among the better examples in general, and one of the best you can get in this segment. A notable drop in quality is observed when shooting in 60fps with aliasing (jaggies) readily apparent. It's a rather typical outcome, but at least there's no change in color reproduction like we saw on the 10 Plus.
Stabilization is only available in 1080p, unlike on the 10 Plus, where 4K was also covered. This makes the 10's hand-held 4K videos pretty shaky, but 1080p is very well smoothed out.
Here's a glimpse of how the Xperia 10 compares to rivals in our Video compare tool. Head over there for the complete picture.
Xperia 10 against the Galaxy A7 (2018) and the Moto G7 in our Video compare tool
As usual, we're providing you with unedited short samples to download and examine - 2160p@30fps (11s, 73MB), 1080p@30fps (10s, 39MB), and 1080p@60fps (10s, 22MB).
Competition
We hand-picked a few rivals that the Xperia 10 will have to face on the market, and it's not going to be an easy sell, the 10. For example, the Galaxy A7 (2018) offers a more powerful chipset, an extra ultra wide camera, superior display, and vastly longer battery life, at some 30% lower price. It's not ideal, of course, as it charges slowly (over microUSB 2.0, at that), lacks 4K video capture, and its Samsung software may not be to your taste if you're eyeing the Xperia for its vanilla Android.
Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) • Motorola Moto G7 • Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite • Huawei P smart 2019
Vanilla Android is what the Moto G7 will bring you though, and will do it for less cash than the Xperia, again. Even the otherwise not very energy-efficient Moto will outlast the Xperia in actual use, but in the other areas that matter the two are very much tied. Which is where the Moto's price trump card comes in.
The Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite is also more affordable than the Xperia 10, runs on the more powerful Snapdragon 660 while also lasting longer in the process. The Mi's MIUI is diametrically opposed to the Xperia's vanilla Android but we can see how both can have their fans.
The same could be said of the EMUI in the Huawei P smart 2019, but from a more objective standpoint it's got longer battery life than the Xperia, and its Kirin 710 is once again brawnier than the 10's Snapdragon 630. Neither has the best image quality, though the Xperia is perhaps superior, plus it records 4K video, unlike the Huawei. The P smart 2019 is cheaper, though.
Verdict
Much like the Xperia 10 Plus, the non-Plus isn't a strikingly good value proposition. On the contrary - there's a ton of competing offerings that deliver more for less. Particularly disappointing is the Xperia 10's battery life, and it's not like you're trading that for top performance - in fact, most rivals pack more punch.
If, on the other hand, the tall aspect screen is exactly what you've been waiting for, and you're after a compact midranger, by all means go for it. Ideally, with a carrier subsidy. Or a couple of months down the line, when the 10's price drops by a few 10s.
Pros
- Standout design thanks to the extreme aspect, one of the more pocketable phones around.
- Overall high-quality display - bright, contrasty, good outdoors, can also be color-accurate with the right settings.
- Nice fingerprint reader experience.
- Vanilla Android 9.0 Pie,
- The screen aspect ratio is well suited for movie watching or scrolling long lists.
Cons
- Too pricey in the already commoditized midrange segment
- Below average battery life.
- Some apps do not play well with the 21:9 aspect.
- The chipset is inadequate for the screen resolution and price range.
- Camera produces distinctly warm output, doesn't have a stellar dynamic range and HDR mode impacts sharpness.
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