Sony Xperia 1 II review: it’s a stretch

Sony ’ s newfangled Xperia 1 II smartphone is purpose-built for one very specific matter : to make your earphone work a small piece more like a standalone Sony Alpha camera. It ’ s a long time coming : Sony has made dozens of Xperia phones since its first gear one in 2008, but until immediately, none of them have had an identity this net or compel .
Every smartphone brand tries to create its own ecosystem — or at least its own experience. You surely understand what it ’ s like to live in Apple ’ s iPhone earth, Google ’ s Pixel universe, or Samsung ’ s Galaxy world. But there ’ s long been an stallion Sony world that ’ s just as chiseled, and it has a community of users that ’ south barely as dedicated. It ’ sulfur just that Sony ’ s world wasn ’ thyroxine about smartphones ; it was about its Alpha channel of cameras .
Sony has finally taken the first steps of directly connecting that populace to the long-sufferance Xperia smartphone lineup. And though the leave international relations and security network ’ t a dwelling race, the Xperia 1 II finally offers something to recommend beyond good looks .
It ’ s a shame that you have to spend $ 1,200 to live in Sony ’ s modern smartphone world.

last year ’ mho Sony Xperia 1 set Sony down the path of a new design speech for the Xperia batting order : improbable and minimal. The 1 II looks precisely like last year ’ south phone, only bigger. It ’ s a squared-off, all-black glass slab with a huge 6.5-inch sieve with a 21:9 aspect ratio .
The OLED display measures 3840 ten 1644 pixels. ( Sony calls this 4K. ) It has a standard 60Hz refresh rate, a disappointment on a phone of this class. There ’ second a “ Motion Blur Reduction ” choice that ’ s supposed to make it feel more like a 90Hz display, but it doesn ’ thyroxine hold up to true high freshen rate options like the Samsung Galaxy S20 or Pixel 4 .
The improbable aspect of this call means that it ’ south simultaneously more comfortable and more awkward to use. It ’ second easy to hold in one hand and lets you see more content without scrolling, but give up on any plans to reach the top with that lapp bridge player, no topic your fascinate .
That excess stature besides means its inductive radio charger may be placed excessively high for some charging docks. It only worked on flat docks in my tests. But actually, it doesn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate work there either because the thing is then damn slippery. flush on a dock with some grippy rubber eraser on it, the Xperia 1 II slides correctly off. In fact, my review unit clattered on to my hardwood floor enough times that it finally developed a crack on the rear looking glass. Damned if I know which fall did it, but I do know that all of them were approximately three feet. Get a lawsuit .
That ’ s a bummer because, judged on looks alone, it ’ south my front-runner call of 2020. It ’ second symmetry embodied .

The glass back on the Xperia 1 II is very slippery


The Sony Xperia 1 II has a real, physical shutter button


Compared to an iPhone 11 Pro, the Xperia 1 II is very tall.

Beyond aesthetics, Sony has struggled in the past to differentiate itself from other phones. This fourth dimension, it succeeds with a number of rare features. The fingerprint detector is elegantly integrated into the side-mounted ability push button, there ’ south microSD storage expansion, there are double front-facing stereophonic speakers, there ’ s a dedicate physical camera clitoris, and — holy of holies — there ’ s a real earphone jack .
To round out the rest of the smartphone basics : it has the common flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 central processing unit, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of repositing, IP65/68 debris and water system resistor, and a 4,000mAh battery. The battery life is enough to get me through a day of basic custom. But if you hope to use this earphone intensively for either gaming or shooting photos and videos, plan on topping up in the former afternoon .
normally, this is the depart where I tell american english buyers that, at $ 1,200, you ’ re paying supernumerary for the 5G modem that you may not inevitably get a lot use out of. That ’ randomness truthful with the Xperia 1 II, only Sony international relations and security network ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate enabling 5G at all in the US. Asking users to pay more for 5G of dubious utility bothers me on early phones, but asking them to pay for it without any utility program on the Xperia 1 II seems therefore out of touch as to be lost in extinct outer space .

The Sony Xperia 1 II has three camera lenses

The unharmed point of the Sony Xperia 1 II is the television camera organization. Sony has hanker made the most popular image sensors inside smartphones — it ’ s a reasonably safe stake to say that you have owned a earphone with a Sony detector inside it — and so far, Sony ’ s Xperia phones have historically had disappointing cameras .
It ’ s a mystery with a relatively childlike explanation : photograph work. For whatever argue, Sony has never been able to keep tempo with Apple, Google, Samsung, or even OnePlus when it comes to converting what the detector gets into a great photograph .
Using the default camera app on the Xperia 1 II, that ’ south hush the encase. The images I get out of all three lenses — the regular, the telephotograph, and the ultrawide — are all competent but feel just a little lifeless. They ’ re quite beneficial, but compared to other phones in the class, they ’ re not capital. Sony ’ s camera system doesn ’ t shine until you take things into manual mode — in an wholly different, preinstalled television camera app .
Sony wants you to use its call camera more like a mirrorless television camera, for better or worse
There ’ mho another set of cameras with great sensors that don ’ t make it dead-simple and automatic to get great photos : standalone DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. They put more of the burden on the exploiter to figure out their settings — but they besides give that user radically more control over them .
That ’ s the direction Sony is taking with the Xperia 1 II. rather of fighting a miss computational photography struggle against early smartphones, Sony is taking the fight back to its home turf : the Alpha television camera line .
It starts with a gigantic 1/1.7-inch Exmor RS 12-megapixel detector set behind a Zeiss lens at a 24mm equivalent focal length. Sony has optimized the stallion television camera smokestack for high-speed photography : it can focus at 60fps and burst-shoot at 20fps. It besides borrows the much-loved autofocus feature from its Alpha television camera, endlessly focusing on a homo or tied an animal ’ randomness center .
That ’ s a distribute of technical camera spill the beans — which is precisely the point. Where Google and Apple will regale you with stories about how their cameras take multiple frames and then combine them with enhanced HDR calculation, Sony wants you to treat your earphone like it ’ s a standalone mirrorless camera .
It sounds silly, but the bare inclusion of a consecrated physical shutter button goes a farseeing way toward making this device feel more like a professional camera .

Sony’s Photo Pro app uses an interface that’s similar to Sony’s mirrorless Alpha cameras

Sony ’ s Photo Pro app even goes sol far as to imitate the actual exploiter interface of Sony ’ s Alpha cameras. As a Sony television camera exploiter, I love this, but I am besides mindful that many camera people abhor it ( or rather, they abhor the menu system that often lies behind it ). In any case, it ’ sulfur more familiar to me than many of the professional camera apps I ’ ve tried .
once you make the jump into Photo Pro, you ’ ll find that shooting with the Xperia 1 II is enjoyable in the same way that shooting in full manual with a real television camera is enjoyable. Sony doesn ’ thyroxine give you direct control over the shutter rush, but you can control everything else ( including ISO, a carnival enough stand-in since the lens aperture is fixed ). The unit I ’ molarity testing has non-final software, sol queerly, it doesn ’ t include RAW capabilities. As of nowadays, it ’ s a wyrd girl, and we ’ ll need to see how Sony ’ mho promised implementation works at launch late in July .
The basic exemplar is capturing apparent motion blur at night. Night mode on other phones won ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate allow you to do that because they ’ re trying to do something else : brighten up the view so you can see what ’ randomness in it more intelligibly. The Xperia 1 II gives you enough restraint to get experimental : you can force a gloomy ISO to keep a farseeing shutter focal ratio and not produce an over-brightened image .

The same idea applies to video — for the most separate. There ’ s an app called Cinema Pro that provides a distribute of the same video recording features you ’ five hundred expect from a standalone camera. It cleverly lets you collate a bunch of video recording clips into a individual undertaking as you shoot them. rather of barely dumping everything into your television camera roll willy-nilly, it lets you think of your videos as distinct movie projects .
The broad manual approach lone very works on the main 12-megapixel detector, which is of a higher quality than either the wide or tele detector. When you stick to it, you can get photos and videos that are actually sandbag — but you have to work for it. I don ’ t normally want to work for it when I ’ m using a smartphone .

I get into it more profoundly in the video above, but the cold reality is that a much as we ’ d like to think that phones have replaced the want for standalone cameras, they are unlike things. equitable as you make different kinds of music depending on what legal document you choose, you make different kinds of photos depending on the camera .
What Google figured out first ( followed close by Apple, Samsung, and a few others ) is that it ’ second better to make a great smartphone camera that leans into a smartphone ’ s strengths than to make a smartphone that tries to replicate the know of using a DSLR or mirrorless camera. The drift of computational photography international relations and security network ’ metric ton merely about compensating for the limitations of bantam sensors and lenses ; it ’ mho creating a new kind of television camera .
The Xperia 1 II ’ s television camera runs in the inverse management. I am truly matter to to see what kind of new musical instrument Sony could make hera, but largely, I wish the default camera know was stronger .

The Xperia 1 II is an elegant device, but it costs much more than many of its competitors

Compared to every phone Sony has made before, it has improved so much on the Xperia 1 II that I can ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate aid but feel a little agitate about it. Where once Xperia phones had no differentiating reason for existing, now they ’ re focused on a raw television camera experience. Where early Android phones try increasingly arcane tricks to fix their photos, the Xperia 1 II simply puts the control condition in the hands of the photographer .
Despite all of that, though, I can ’ triiodothyronine recommend the Xperia 1 II to any but the most give Sony world fan. The high $ 1,200 price combined with the strange lack of 5G in the US makes it a confuse device at best. Phones that include now-standard flagship features like high gear review rate screens and stronger auto-mode photos can be had for hundreds less. And if you are a Sony camera world citizen, wait to see what the approaching Xperia Pro can do. ( It will have HDMI-in, so you can use it as a proper monitor on a standalone camera. )
With the Xperia 1 II, Sony has ultimately found the right direction for its smartphones. now it merely needs to move a small further without tripping over its own price chase .

Agree to Continue: Sony Xperia 1 II

Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It ’ s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we started counting precisely how many times you have to hit “ harmonize ” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don ’ t read and decidedly can ’ triiodothyronine negotiate .
To use the Sony Xperia 1 II, you must agree to :

  • Google Terms of Service
  • Google Play Terms of Service
  • Google Privacy Policy (included in ToS)
  • Install apps and updates: “You agree this device may also automatically download and install updates and apps from Google, your carrier, and your device’s manufacturer, possibly using cellular data.”
  • Agree that you are “aware” of warranty, safety, and the existence of data costs.

The trace agreements are optional :

  • Sony Xperia services privacy policy, which includes some “personal data” and “detailed diagnostics.”
  • Use location: “Google may collect location data periodically and use this data in any anonymous way to improve location accuracy and location-based services.”
  • Allow scanning: “Allow apps and services to scan for Wi-Fi networks and nearby devices at any time, even when Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is off.”
  • Send usage and diagnostic data

additionally, if you want to use the Google Assistant, you must agree to let Google collect :

  • App info from your devices
  • Contact info from your devices: “This data may be saved and used in any Google service where you are signed in to give you more personalized experiences. You can see your data, delete it and change your settings at account.google.com”

other features like Google Pay may require extra agreements .
Final run : six mandate agreements and at least six optional agreements .

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