Sony’s New High-End Smartphone Targets Photogs, Vloggers With Camera Tech

Sony today announced the Xperia I V(Opens in a new window), the fifth generation of its flagship smartphone series. The Xperia I has long relied on the same basic design language, which is to say that all the new stuff is buried within the glass-and-metal chassis.

Sony says(Opens in a new window) the primary improvement over the Xperia I IV is a brand-new, two-layer transistor pixel stacked CMOS image sensor, which the company is calling Exmor T for mobile. Fitted to the phone’s main camera, it’s 1.7 larger than the sensor of the I IV’s camera and delivers twice the low-light performance and three times the amount of color saturation. At the same time, Sony is using revised image-processing techniques to suppress noise while also expanding the dynamic range to what it claims is the equivalent of a full-frame camera.

(Credit: Sony)

The new sensor means the Xperia I V is a photo and video beast. It features a triple-camera array arranged in a vertical column on the phone’s rear panel. The main camera captures approximately 48MP images that are binned down by four to produce 12MP jpegs. It has an effective lens size of 24mm. The ultrawide camera has a 12MP sensor and a 16mm effective lens size and the telescoping telephoto camera has a 12MP sensor and an 85mm-125mm effective lens.

Beyond the camera hardware is an advanced suite of apps for capturing pictures and videos. The Photo Pro and Video Pro apps support eye-tracking focus, 30fps continuous shooting, the Creative Look filters from Sony’s Alpha cameras, and S-Cinetone for accurate skin tones and textures. Vloggers will love the Product Showcase Setting, which maintains focus on a product in the presenter’s hand rather than the presenter’s face. Fresh mic placement and new vertical video capture tools should please TikTokers in particular.

(Credit: Sony)

As for the rest, we’ve mostly seen it before. Sony did little to change the phone’s look. It’s a tall, narrow phone with a 21:9 aspect ratio screen. Sony picked aluminum for the frame and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus for the front and rear glass panels. It comes in black, silver, or green.

The display packs 3,840 by 1,644 pixels, which Sony is calling “4K.” The 6.5-inch panel boasts an insane pixel density of 643ppi, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. The phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and ships with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It supports microSD memory cards up to 1TB. The device meets the IP68 rating for protection from dust and water, though it still houses a side-mounted fingerprint reader and 3.5mm headphone jack.

It has a full, modern connectivity suite. You get Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi 6E, and GPS/GLONASS. The 5G support is limited to sub-6GHz, but based on the spec sheet a healthy number of mid-band frequencies are on board. Last, there’s a 5,000mAh battery inside that should push the phone through a full day’s use.

The Sony Xperia I V is up for preorder now with US shipments expected to begin in late July. The phone costs $1,399. Those who preorder will receive a free pair of Sony Linkbuds (value $180).