Sony has launched a few smartphones today and the most interesting of all is the new flagship, the Xperia 1.
Sony has decided to get rid of the XZ prefix they were using for their smartphones and decided to start afresh and there are a lot of them.
For starters, the Xperia 1 has a lot of ‘firsts’. It has the world’s first 4K HDR OLED 21:9 display on a phone. It is a 10 bit panel which means it can show upto a billion shades of colours. Most phones can only show upto 16.7 million colours so you can see how impressive that is. That display is absurdly tall and the aspect ratio is what we see on cinema displays.
The second part is the new camera system. Sony had this weird thing of selling their 12MP sensors to other customers and not putting them on their phones. Well, it seems they have changed that with the Xperia 1. \
The Xperia 1 has a triple camera system on the back. There is a normal 12MP camera with the normal 26mm field of view and a bright f/1.6 aperture with OIS, a wide angle (16mm) 12MP camera and a 12MP telephoto (52mm) camera which has OIS. It has an 8MP selfie camera with a f/2 aperture. It still shoots in 4K HDR as well as their touted 1080p @960fps and for
This is the first Sony flagship with optical image stabilization on the primary cameras and OIS is useful when taking photos in low light conditions since it minimizes handshake.
They also added eye detection autofocus (eye AF) which is something they borrowed from their camera lineup. Eye AF is important when you want to shoot photos of people and in that scenario, you want the eye of the subject being tack sharp. They also added 10fps burst shooting which is great for taking multiple photos in quick succession and selecting the best one from the bunch.
Sony also touts the Xperia 1 cinema recording capabilities. Thanks to the colour accurate display and their new Cinema Pro feature, you can shoot video in a neutral cinematic tone which you can tailor later to set a mood, like how professionals in the cinema industry do it. It also has Dolby Atmos which is great if you are an audiophile.
Of course the Xperia 1 adds the other features that we expect from 2019 flagships. It runs on the Snapdragon 855 and will ship with Android Pie. It has 6GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage with an option to expand this with external storage. The battery is only a 3300mAh unit which is worrying if you consider the 4K display that it sports.
This is the most exciting Sony phone in a while and it shows their renewed focus on having a phone that pairs well with others while still offering a unique set of features. Sony says that they are planning a late Spring release with this phone and I expect it to be in the $1,000 range.