Sony Xperia 1 III annihilates Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra in speed test but offers more mixed results in camera comparison

While Xperia fans around most of the world wait patiently to get their hands on the Sony Xperia 1 III, reviews and benchmark runs of the Japanese flagship smartphone have started cropping up on YouTube. One from the very popular Vietnamese channel Vật Vờ Studio features a camera and photo comparison with the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra while another by TechNick contains rapid-fire rounds of app, benchmark, and game speed tests that show just how fast the Xperia 1 III is.

In the camera comparison, the Galaxy S21 Ultra subjectively has the edge over the Xperia 1 III, although a low-light image certainly shows the Sony device can produce better results than the Samsung rival in some situations. However, the S21 Ultra seems to offer sharper and brighter images as a whole. Fortunately, when it came to TechNick’s thorough speed testing, the Sony Xperia 1 III more than held its own.

Both devices sport the Snapdragon 888 SoC, 12 GB LPDDR5 RAM, UFS 3.1 storage, and 120 Hz displays, so a benchmark comparison between the two is reasonable. The Xperia 1 III has a slight advantage with its cleaner version of Android 11, and it devastated the Galaxy S21 Ultra in the apps speed test: 20 pts vs. 5 pts. The Sony flagship opened common system apps and editing apps faster than the Samsung phone, and it was mostly faster with opening games too.

As for benchmark apps, the Sony Xperia 1 III was quicker than the S21 Ultra in both Geekbench 5 and 3DMark Wild Life, leaving the latter phone picking up a handful of points with entertainment apps such as Spotify and Netflix. RAM management was a roughly equal affair while the Xperia 1 III delivered better battery life and booted up faster than the S21 Ultra. The end result for the whole run was 23 points for the Sony phone and just 6 points for the Samsung device.

Buy the Sony Xperia 1 II or Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra on Amazon