Sony's New Ultra Flagship Smartphone... By Unbox Therapy

To guys I'm I got my rig, I call it Megalodon. Today, we've got one of the more unusual smartphones. There's nothing flashy about this phone. It feels durable out the box. I don't think anybody's, even gonna, think about putting a case on it in recent memory. This year, any year yeah you could send a PS5 signal into whoa.

I've looked at Sony smartphones in the past, and I've been pleasantly surprised. They've had uh they've, put an emphasis on photography on camera features, video features, sort of pulled from their camera, expertise, put it into their phones, complex, complicated, I'm glad that it exists, though, and I'm glad that Sony's taking a different approach only because we have so many great options already at just the kind of flagship premium thing and glass and polish and fingerprints and fancy and luxury. So I've had a positive experience with the previous generation Xperia 1 Xperia 5, but today they took things to a completely different level, but it's a complicated conversation. All right you have this smartphone do I need a new smartphone's 2500. They launched a somewhat controversial product.

I mean it's hard to call it controversial, because it's like what are we? What's the controversy we're talking about the price of the device and what it does and who it's for it's the Xperia pro all right, and they put pro in the name, because it's intended for pros, unlike everybody else, who puts the pro there, because it just sounds good. It's more like a prosumer type. Sony actually expects for professionals to use this setup, not just the phone but the phone with the camera attachment they want to get that dude from the NFL. They want to be inside, of a variety of productions via smartphone for easier streaming and for easier sharing of files more quickly by integrating the smartphone into the production environment. Now, for a lot of you, you're just saying: well, I just see a premium price tag.

Lou, a lot of you are saying is that a 2500 smartphone Lou does that have a snapdragon 865 in it Lou and that's a whole different area of the market and for those people. You need to recognize that this isn't necessarily targeted at you. It's still going to perform. It's still going to be nice, even as a phone without the camera being attached to it. Furthermore, it's still got some unique features inside the camera application, video application, totally professional stuff, and it has a rugged body.

Why don't we? Just maybe I should just unbox the thing: okay, actually real, quick, let's just look at the website, all right, 24.99, making it one of the most expensive smartphones I've ever featured here on the show. This is the key feature HDMI connectivity. This is what allows you to use this as a monitor for well. It doesn't even have to be a Sony camera there's going to be some advanced functionality there, but as an external monitor places like this YouTube channels, and such we use these things. These things are used here not often seen in the light of day by you on the other end of the lens, but back behind it, I've been using these for years, HDMI connectivity into the phone.

It can do some of what that thing previously did, and those are expensive too. Those are like 2gs, too, also got 5g millimeter wave in here and that's another ambition. This is going to be key for wirelessly, transmitting a high quality high resolution, video low dielectric, constant material optimizes signal strength, my goodness 6.5 inch 21x9 cinema wide. So this was another thing I noticed in the previous model. You have this really slender design, but still a big display.

So it's a little taller now. You can't find all that much content, that's going to fit in there perfectly that you didn't shoot yourself, but you get a one-handed functionality of comfort when holding it with one hand that you don't get out of obviously wider form factor devices snapdragon 865 I mentioned previously. It is water, resistant ip6568, and it has a 4 000 William hour battery. So those are your key specifications. But if you look at this whole package right here- and we actually have all this stuff prepares yourself for a comprehensive video, we have many of the Sony things.

This is the hot new a1 camera I'll. Do the rig thing for you? It's not gonna, be ultra comprehensive, but I'll show you sort of roughly what an entire package can look like for your uh personal YouTube ambitions which the may very well be there in a professional environment fast and easy file, transfers straight from the photograph on the field and into the smartphone prepared for sharing, because of all the connectivity built in the live broadcasting thing is quite interesting to me: let's hop into the box, why don't? We also have micro, SD card expansion? Okay, so here it is very uh, simple, unboxing experience almost like a professional item. This thing is a tank. Oh, I like that. I, like the tank aspect too.

It kind of reminds me of some of those rugged phones of past the texture here, like a premium, camera has a little of grit and grip to it. It is not slick, and it does not attract fingerprints. Furthermore, it's there. I promise there's a texture on there. You can see the camera module in this location, it's all embedded, so no big giant camera hump one of the benefits of a slightly fatter phone with the pro designation right.

There in gold Xperia pro another unusual characteristic of not just this phone, but also the Xperia one. You have your fingerprint scanner. It's baked into your power, switch on the side of the phone, where your thumb goes. So it's a single-handed kind of unlock like this, you, you don't have to go down to the display and in my time I spent with the Xperia one the last version of it. I actually found that to be perfectly fine and convenient so no problem there.

You also have some dedicated buttons over here, dedicated shutter button, to make you feel like a real professional as you pop off that photo. Instead of touching some digital indication of the shutter release, I mean you feel like bang, and this is, of course just using the phone without any kind of camera attachment something I notice over here on the side as well. Is that one of the buttons here is indented, purposely and then the other one. Next to it has a texture, so you can quickly determine the difference between the two without seeing them. You know which is which I like that you've also got volume.

Rocker over on this side here and another unique thing to the Sony, lineup is the fact that the sim card trade does not require a sim card tool. It pops out super easily and quickly, which is not just nice for sim cards, but it's also nice for the expandable storage. Since we have micro SD on there, if you were constantly subbing out or swapping out or transferring files from micro SD, then the need to look for a sim tool. It would be a little frustrating in this case. It's just your fingernail, and it pops out, and you still have the IP rating on there, which is nice.

Now the magical port is down here on the bottom, this HDMI port, which is what's different about it's a HDMI input, not output. So this is a display. You can send a HDMI signal into your phone to use it as a screen. Obviously, the application of sending a camera to use this as a monitor is what they are advertising, but could you not send I mean you could send anything there? Could you not? You said yeah, you could send a PS5 signal into whoa. I'm not sure why you would want to, but I presume it would be possible.

You have your USB type-c connector for charging it up and there's a little cover here on the display. So this is not going to win any awards for the know. Having the most aggressive screen to body ratio, there is a forehead and a chin on there and the camera module front facing in that location. Also in the package, a little of paperwork, 20 watt charge brick and the headset is included, which is a mini jack headset. But, oh yes, I almost didn't notice.

You still have an analog audio output, so you can plug in your headset, that's kind of becoming a professional feature in 2021. You don't see it very frequently, but that could be useful for monitoring in the professional environment. Content creation, USB type c. Cable is the last item over there so that wraps up your unboxing experience, Sony doesn't do much to the skin. They keep it pretty simple, which I appreciate.

You'll see. It is basically unadulterated android, which is really nice. For me. I've always been a fan of the pixel devices next nexus devices. Before that, I like a clean android experience in a lot of cases and so Sony doesn't mess with it too much yeah, it's 4k, HDR OLED, that's on a 6.5 inch display. So this is a crazy number of pixels, which also contributes to the price point.

Now. I know that you could just go, get the expiry one and say to yourself: wait a sec. I had the 4k display over there, and it wasn't 2500 absolutely but again once it becomes a monitor, and you start looking at portable 4k monitors for your camera equipment. Again, that's YouTube life I'm talking about! Then you start to see some pretty significant price tags associated with pocketable 4k resolution for monitoring now on the smartphone side of it. It's just kind of nice to have 4k, and you could hold it in.

You know this distance from your eyes and still have uh. I mean you can't spot any pixels in there. It is some seriously tight, pixel density, 6.5 inch. I don't know if it's the only 4k display, but it's one of the few ones that's popped up over here. It does mean.

However, you don't get the exotic refresh rate on there. So you still, you got a 60 hertz display. Oh, you know what it has a lot of ram 12 gigabytes of ram. I think that's an upgrade 512 gigs of internal storage, so I suppose that's where they're getting their pro aspect as well as far as the spec sheet is concerned, and because you have that micro SD card slot, that opens you up to another terabyte of storage potentially as well. Now, if you look at your home page here, it's all about content creation, you have hot spot and tethering endurance, mode, external, monitor, mode transfer and tagging imaging edge mobile.

You have photo pro and cinema pro. These are separate to the default android camera applications which are still there. If you want to take a quick photo. This is basically the android style camera app, but really the magic here happens when you launch into photo pro or the video pro mode, and it's like I mean it's a whole manual dream here, for anyone who wants to dive deeper into the photography realm and access features that were previously only accessible to dedicated cameras now come to life on the smartphone in the form of the Xperia pro. Like look at this thing.

Look at this layout with your exposure. Over here I mean you like autofocus, continuous autofocus, there's the eye tracking autofocus. That Sony is so famous for on all the cameras that every single YouTuber uses its in here, it's in the phone and so whether you want to just use the device itself as the capture device as opposed to a dedicated camera working in conjunction with the thing, it still packs a lot of the stuff you're looking for in a more professional grade, camera into a smartphone form factor, if I log out of here and go into the cinema pro, it's the same story, and you're going to see all kinds of exciting stuff in here picture profiles that are flat, so you can color grade them afterwards. Uh the super wide aspect, ratio frame rates that might give you a more sort of film. Look if that's what you're going for 23.98. Obviously, the variety of lens options as well from 16 mil f22, all the way up to 70, mil f24 big apertures all the way along there- and this is the cool part with the look we're real pros on this show.

If I switch between, looks like that's Venice cs, so you're talking about a sort of uh pro color setup, where you're going to get into your post-production and go in there and enhance the color as you see fit, if you're not in the production mindset, this may be not all be all that appealing to you. But if you did pick this phone up, it could be a jump off point for playing around with more professional settings that, as far as smartphones are concerned, usually require some extra software or something to unlock anything close to this, and you're still probably not going to end up here now. If you don't want to do post-production, or you're, not looking for those exotic picture profiles, you can of course, once again, like I said previously, just launch into the stock application, and then you can see your usual saturated variety of colors there so that you can go straight to sharing, and you don't need to run any color correction or color grading on it. So in the photo mode here that is your standard lens, a snap a photo there here is your wide, and it does appear to have some lens correction in there by default. We have the wide angle, also the 70 millimeter zoom, which appears to not have the greatest focusing distance.

You have to be a fair, but it's I mean that's a very true to life representation. Wow, look at that. It's almost bang on even in the stock camera app, so fancy and fun stuff going on. I don't even know. Maybe Sony expects that people who are in the market for a Sony camera end up picking the phone because they're already such a fan of the camera they're, like you know what I'm constantly on this thing, I want a phone that complements that, and this is another thing you just don't see that frequently as a person watching content on YouTube.

But if you converse with content creators, it's everybody has one of these cameras to begin with, and so Sony kind of makes a play and says you know what we're not Samsung, we're not apple, we're not selling a tremendous number of smartphones, but when it comes to cameras, we're kind of up here right now, so they're like maybe we're a camera first company and the smartphone is complementary to that. Maybe that's an angle and approach we take, and we go lower volume, higher margin and position this device at 24.99, it's quite possible all right, so other items that have been included from Sony for this unboxing experience. The camera is a whole other, ridiculous story of resolutions and frame rates. This thing shoots: 8k, we tested it to shoot, 8k continuous. I want to switch all the cameras to this camera like Sony's angle and attack, is seeming like it's focusing on me directly and people who live a lifestyle like this, and I guess the market is growing for content creators and therefore, maybe there's more potential buyers than you would have immediately imagined.

So this is a cage that you can install on the outside of the camera and that's going to allow you to rig up all kinds of accessories. It just gives you some more flexibility, and this is the actual cage portion over here. Oh, a cable clamp and look at this wow, that's cool tons of mounting points, a lot of flexibility, certainly a professional type of application and last up is this monster the a1? What did I say? Continuous 8k recording at 30 frames, 4k up to 120 internal, for you know, you've heard these things from other manufacturers over or overheating. I don't know it's a marvel. I don't know how they do it.

Furthermore, I've been using Sony cameras for a long time. It felt like 4k, was kind of where we were, but when it comes to the package they put together with the form factor this new resolution and the autofocus stuff and, like I got like this camera over here. Like look at this, that's autofocus see what I'm saying this is a 20 mil from Sony, but you can see how about the card. Let's try this boom. It's a tough, it's a tough process to figure this out, but they mean when it comes to faces, it's even better with the eye tracking and such they're doing some magic at high resolutions, which that stuff is hard to find the monitor.

On the back, I heard some people talking saying they wish that it was a flippy flappy, like it flipped all the way around, not such a big deal in our particular workflow over here. So I'm, okay with that. What I do like, obviously, is the full-size HDMI port over here. It's a robust connector compared to the mini one, which funny enough. That's what you use on the phone, a full-size, HDMI port, to be locked in for a more extended period of time, it's nice to have it on there type c, connector to power it up.

You still have analog input and output for audio. What is this? Oh, we have networking and then there's a multi-output uh. I guess it's a multi-av output. Oh, look at that. It says: 8k steady, shot, 8k, steady, shot inside dual card slots in there as well.

Now these must be expensive cards. The cf express a. You can insert into either swap you can also insert SD cards, so it's a kind of multi-slot itself, although in order to enable those high resolutions, I guess you're going to need this card to have enough throughput? This stuff is crazy fast. Obviously, this wheel right here is different, the wheel around the wheel. This is a selector for the autofocus mode, AFS, AFC, DMF and then manual focus they kind of went wild on the EVF as well.

This is some crazy resolution too. This turning into a camera video eight case, so many k's all right. Let's quickly finish off the unboxing camera unboxing are very comprehensive, so also inside the package, you have your charger. This is going to charge your battery. This is not a battery.

This is a cf express, a slash, SD card reader, and it is robust. I love this thing. Oh my god. I want this on my desk USB type c, and it's cold metal, there's also a type c cable to connect that a blue bag for a c to c. So, there's a c to a and a c to c power, cable for the battery charger.

Also in the package you're going to have your battery, it is a NPF z100. If you have Sony products already Sony cameras, you may own some of these. Why don't I put together a rig right now, wow? That thread feels so satisfying wow. This is how I wear my hat when I'm rigging, whenever I'm rigging to guys, I'm I got my rig, I call it Megalodon. What lens should I put on here? Not enough light, damn two times magnifier wow, I mean it's.

A cool rig she's, a cool rig, my goodness it is a nice monitor it is I've, got a macro lens on there right now and there's just no way. I could simulate this exact experience on the tiny little display, especially when you add smartphone, like responsiveness for zooming. Like I mean you got the pinch and everything else now. I know that you have a kind of strange aspect: ratio on here you get these black bars on the side. Now, if you tap, it gives you some specifics.

Like your battery life and what you're shooting in on the camera and, of course, uh some different settings over here for me, where it really comes to life, is when you are when you tap in on it and kind of focus it on a specific area. Like look at this macro lens and then having a 4k resolution with the tight pixel density, it's a magical experience. I can light up just like focus on one line of keys on that particular keyboard. So it's a capable monitor, but it's a complicated conversation. All right you have this smartphone.

Do I need a new smartphone, smartphone's 2500, this camera, the a1 again, you don't need to have this whole package? You have a capable smartphone, but if you wanted this you're like 10 000 or whatever it is you're shooting 8k it's in one hand, I'm happy, but that's kind of what I do that's kind of my interest for other people. They might be saying hey. If I'm going to spend 2500 on a smartphone. I sure want that smartphone to be my main camera device. That's a lot of people in the world that they're not going to be picking up one of these things, so it's a complicated device, but that's kind of why I like it too, is because it can do all these different things and you kind of get to decide how you want to use it.

You can plug it in. It is really it's almost like a YouTuber phone specifically for somebody who does these types of setups and could utilize this, but it's not without its drawbacks. If this is my phone, what about the notifications? What am I'm going to respond to a text while mounted to the phone and what, if I quickly need to have a private phone call on there? It's like I'm all of a sudden I'm! I know it's not the hugest deal in the world, but it's like do. I want my professional video equipment to be tied into my personal life in the way that a phone happens to be, but if I push this to the side, I'm just like you know I kind of like a rugged utilitarian phone. Furthermore, I'm, like you know, I kind of like some of the things Sony's doing giving me 4k on a screen with this much density.

Oh, I kind of like what they're doing giving me the cinema pro features in the video app inside the phone. That's already there. Oh, I kind of like what they're doing give me 12 gigs of ram and 512 storage with expandable storage. I just got to use my fingernail, oh, I kind of like what they do. Give me the dedicated button on the top.

So I can snap photos and feel like I got that thing even when I don't have that thing. So, as you can see complex complicated, I'm glad that it exists, though, and I'm glad that Sony's taking a different approach only because we have so many great options already at just the kind of flagship premium thing and glass and polish and fingerprints and fancy and luxury they didn't go luxury. They went pro instead, there's nothing flashy about this phone. It feels durable out the box. I don't think anybody's even going to think about putting a case on it because of how robust and tank like it feels that doesn't mean it's going to be for everyone.

I think most people will probably pick luxury over pro, even when it has pro in the name. You look at an iPhone with the shiny everywhere, everything's shiny and the colors, and most pro equipment doesn't do that, for you, a lot of luxury equipment does do that for you, although you don't often refer to luxury items as equipment at all. Now, do you it's a specific device for people like me, so I probably have more appreciation for it than you do and even for me, it's going to be tough to justify this particular purchase. Because of how specific that use case is, I still might get better mileage out of a separate phone on a separate monitor, but there you have it. It is the most expensive phone Sony's, probably ever put out alongside the most expensive, mirrorless camera.

They currently make it's a magical combination if you can afford to pay the bill, but for strictly smartphone buyers, who won't use that HDMI port you're, probably going to end up elsewhere unless this styling and that 4k display is speaking to you on a very deep level, which is also possible. You.

Source : Unbox Therapy