Nine months have passed since I bought the Xperia 1 VI. I wrote in detail below about why I decided to replace my old smartphone with it, but as for the question at the end—“Was the upgrade the right choice?”—I can now say, in hindsight, that it was. The Xperia 1 VII released afterward ended up causing an unprecedented recall due to devices turning into “bricks.” I’m truly relieved that I didn’t have to use a phone fearing it might suddenly become unusable, and I genuinely feel sorry for those who purchased the Xperia 1 VII and were affected. Still, as a long-time Xperia fan, it is deeply disappointing that Sony shifted production of its ¥200,000 flagship model from its own factory in Thailand to a Chinese contractor, only to end up with such a fatal recall fiasco. Even I may not buy another Xperia next time. As for the Xperia 1 VI itself, it was updated to Android 16 at the end of last November, and just yesterday another update was released. The latest update appears mainly to fix issues related to Android 16. Indeed, after upgrading to Android 16, I felt that battery life had become slightly worse. I usually use the “Battery Care” feature and limit charging to 80% each night. Even so, the battery would typically remain around 30–40% at bedtime, but recently it has sometimes dropped below 20%. I hope this update resolves the issue. Overall, I am mostly satisfied with this model, but even before the OS update there were occasional glitches. In my case, they include the following:
・When charging, the screen turns monochrome by design, but sometimes it does not return to color after unplugging the cable. In such cases, the only solution is to restart the phone.
・Occasionally, when an alarm goes off, the “Stop/Snooze” dialog does not appear. I have no choice but to disable the alarm setting itself each time to stop it. This happens quite frequently.
・About once a month, the phone suddenly crashes and restarts without warning. There is no clear pattern—it just happens out of the blue. Sometimes the reboot takes quite a long time, and during those moments I worry that it might “brick” like the Xperia 1 VII.
As for the first two problems, I somewhat suspect compatibility issues with the Nova Launcher. Although usability may decline, I am considering switching back to the default Xperia launcher for a while to see if that helps.