Sony: The flagship Xperia 1 VIII, priced at over 10,000 yuan, is selling like hotcakes;

Sony probably didn’t expect that in the 2026 smartphone market, almost all mainstream flagship models would follow the trend of cutting redundant interfaces and pursuing the ultimate in thinness and lightness. On the contrary, by insisting on retaining two traditional configurations, the SD card slot and the 3.5mm headphone jack, Sony directly boosted the sales of its newly released Xperia 1 VIII.

According to the latest reports from Japanese media, Sony’s latest flagship smartphone, the Xperia 1 VIII, is performing exceptionally well in the market, with strong sales and extremely high user satisfaction ratings, completely exceeding the brand’s previous expectations.

Despite the fact that this model is priced at over 200,000 yen in the Japanese domestic market and starts at 1,500 euros or 1,400 pounds in Europe, which is close to 12,000 yuan, its high price has reached the first tier of top-tier flagship phones. However, this has not hindered its upward momentum. Especially in the European market, thanks to Sony’s continuous strengthening of its direct sales channels in recent years, the sales of this new model have achieved a very significant year-on-year growth.

When discussing the matching logic between product design philosophy and real user needs, a Sony brand representative publicly revealed that the results of an internal user survey showed that all consumers who purchased the Xperia 1 VIII gave extremely high praise to the model’s retention of the micro SD card expansion slot and the 3.5mm headphone jack. These two features, which other companies had long since eliminated, were precisely the core motivations for many users to choose this product.

Sony has officially stated that these two traditional features, which other manufacturers considered redundant and abandoned, have now become an indispensable part of the Xperia brand identity. In subsequent flagship product iterations, these two practical interfaces will continue to be retained to meet the needs of core users. Sony will not blindly cut essential user functions in order to follow the trend of making the body thinner.