Sony Is Doing What Apple Didn't By TechTalkTV

Over recent years, phone makers have channeled their creative energy into improving cameras and accommodating more sensors on smartphones. The evident result is the phenomenal increase in competition between brands to offer more cameras for fewer bucks. Innovation has been the key to surviving in this competitive environment, and one camera technology that has been the epitome of innovation is periscope zoom cameras. Smartphones with periscope lens cameras have been around for a few years. Oppo was the first company to show a working prototype phone with such a camera, giving it 5x lossless zoom. Later on, other smartphone makers, including Huawei, launched phones with similar camera technology.

Samsung also joined the fray last year with the Galaxy S20 Ultra. While Apple's iPhone 12 range has excellent cameras, but one area where they lag behind the competition is in their zoom capabilities, with even the iPhone 12 Pro Max only offering 2.5x optical zoom. And if you were hoping that this year's iPhone models would finally have periscope zoom cameras then you would be disappointed because not only this year's iPhones won't feature periscope zoom cameras, but next year's iPhones will not either. This means Apple will hop on the zoom trend in 2023. But Sony is going to do what Apple didn't do and will not do for at least 2 years and that's providing this cool zoom camera feature for their customers.

Sony confirmed that it will be holding a launch event on April 14 where the company will be announcing the Sony Xperia 1 III flagship as well as a couple of other phones on the said date. An early look at the handset shows that the phone will have a periscope zoom camera although it's not clear whether it's going to 5x or 10x like the one on the Galaxy S21 Ultra. As we know, a periscope lens allows for a greater optical zoom range than a conventional telephoto camera, without taking up more space. That means Sony could increase the zoom range without making the phone or camera bump any thicker and that's what we see on the Xperia 1 III. The camera bump isn't as significant as other camera phones out there.

Based on reports, Sony has equipped this handset with a Snapdragon 888 SoC, along with a 120 Hz high refresh rate display and a 4K resolution. It's the only smartphone out there that offers a combination of 4K and 120Hz. There should be at least 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage too, which should make the Xperia 1 III very competitive with other flagships released this year. But the problem is Sony is still sticking to the same dated 2017 design. This could have looked amazing back in the day but now, considering literally every Android phone maker has switched to a punch-hole camera system with an edge-to-edge display, Sony's smartphones are now started looking stale.

It feels like phone designers at Sony had turned on cruise control and called it a day or a year in this case. What makes it worse is that even Google who was known for making the worst-looking phones has now started to make some good ones. Yes, these small bezels offer some function such as it houses stereo speakers but companies like Samsung are doing stereo speakers while providing an edge to edge look, so Sony doesn't have an excuse here. But keeping the bezels aside, I think the Xperia 1 III is an amazing handset that goes toe to toe with the best Android phones out there. I just hope they price it reasonably and market it really well.

Sony is among the only few OG smartphone makers left and I’m cheering for them. Apart from providing Samsung and Google Pixels some competition, it would extremely be disappointing a brand like Sony fades into obscurity like LG. Of course, let me know your thoughts down in the comments and as always I'll see you tomorrow... Peace out!.

Source : TechTalkTV