It’s tall and elegantly slim, and the unique shape is part of its appeal

The long OLED display means the phone looks different from any others on the market. Both in the case of those TVs and this phone, the super widescreen aspect ratio takes some getting used to. Personally, I really like it. It’s tall and elegantly slim, and the unique shape is part of its appeal.The display doesn’t cover the whole of the front of the phone, thanks to a camera and speaker at the top edge and small area of blank space at the bottom. But these black areas pretty much disappear, thanks to Sony’s cleverly designed wallpapers. Still images, in some cases, open into place with an animation and subtle darker areas at each end. It also means there’s no notch or peephole camera in the display – it’s a pure oblong with gently curved corners and nothing missing.It feels good in the hand thanks to the Gorilla Glass which covers front and back and the aluminium frame in between. The joins between the different materials are super-smooth, so you can roll the phone through your hands as though it were a worry stone – something made even more appealing thanks to the slim width of the phone.Though the back is glass, there’s no wireless charging on this phone. Sony has put it in previous Xperia handsets but the thinking seems to be that the slimness was important here and it didn’t want to compromise that by adding a charging coil.The three cameras that run down the back of the phone are centrally placed in line and look great. Unlike the Nokia 9 PureView with its cameras flush to the surface, these are raised.There are plenty of buttons on this phone, more than you usually find. As well as the inevitable volume rocker button and power button, there’s a dedicated camera shutter and the fingerprint sensor that we’ll come to in a moment. The shutter button is useful – it wakes the camera quickly and is ready to shoot.Colours have regularly been a strength for Sony and there will be four shades for the Xperia 1: white, black, grey and a very fetching purple. My review sample came in the gloss white finish which looks great and makes an attractive connection to the aluminium edge and black-bezeled front.