Sony Xperia 1 ii | A Serious Pro Mode Phone By Reviews.org

(perky music) - I am PDA that's pocket, digital assistant years old. So today's review comes with a side of nostalgia. In the early days of PDA innovation Sony put out some killer hardware under the name Sony CLIE. And today, one of my all time favorite reviews was the supersize fablet, for that time at least, Sony's 6.4 inch Xperia Z Ultra. And now I have in my hands, the Xperia 1 Mark 2. Does it live up to its innovative lineage? Let's find out.

(enthusiastic electronic music) Hey, if any of these videos have helped you, if this video helps you, please consider hitting us with the thumbs up hitting that subscribe and hitting that notification bell so you'll be notified when we upload the latest content. (relaxed hip-hop music) One thing Sony has never shied away from is giving you a premium product at a premium price point. Coming in at a little over a thousand dollars. You're going to have to decide by the end of this review, if the premium in the product is worth the premium in your wallet. I'm going to tell you now, the phone makes a very compelling argument, starting with this six and a half inch, 4k 1644-by-3840 display and the 21-by-9 aspect ratio, meaning it's tall and narrow.

Sony makes its first statement "All eyes on me" and they should be supporting HDR10, the high 643 pixels per inch density looks amazing when it comes to scaling text and content down to size. It gets small and dense, but it is clear and crisp. The colors for still images are beautiful. If you're like me and into anime and superhero wallpapers, you're not going to be disappointed as you look at 4k wallpapers on your home and lock screen. This display is powered by a few different settings in the display menu.

More on that in a moment. As rich as the colors reproduced are, "The Witcher" though, was a bit dark, not unwatchable dark. I tried it with the Cine settings on and off to see if it would make a difference. And it did not. Of course "Our Planet" looked beautiful and cartoon content looked great, but I thought I'd also give a couple other films a look, specifically because not only do you get a magnificent display but this phone actually has front facing stereo speakers.

So I hit Amazon Prime and I looked at a few pieces of content and it did indeed appear a bit dark. I looked at "Gangs of London", episode one on two different devices, both with OLED displays and the Xperia was definitely darker. Both displays were set to max brightness. I tried the Xperia with the display set to Creator mode and in Standard mode with video enhancement on and off. I wanted to chalk this up to the OLED having deeper blacks.

But like I said, tested it against other panels. This issue isn't uncommon though. I've seen it on other panels where they were OLEDs and were a bit darker than some other OLEDs I've looked at. This is only though a potential issue where shows have darker or low light scenes. Anything else you watch on this panel is beautiful.

And right now this is one of the few 4k UHD HDR10 displays on the market. Overall, the entertainment experience on the Xperia 1 Mark 2 is pretty fantastic because you also get dual stereo speakers, which are among the loudest I've tested peaking at almost 80 decibels with an average of 74 decibels while watching my control for these sound tests, the Urbance trailer. Unlike almost every other phone on the market, the Xperia's speakers are both on the front of the phone. GG, listening to "The Witchers" banquet hall scene, you get all the well layered stereo image that the sound designers on the show intended. And that's both from the speakers and from earbuds or headphones.

(calm hip-hop music) Speaking of intention, the Xperia 1 Mark 2 is one of the closest devices to what a pro model should be. And not just because you get the three and a half millimeter audio jack up top cashing in on the connection to the Sony Alpha pro line of cameras, and even one of my dream filmmaking cameras the Sony Venice, the Xperia 1 Mark 2 takes a different approach to audio and video capture than some of the top flagship competitors. And many modern day phones, you're going to get cameras which rely on computational photography or a trained computer intelligence to make your pictures picture perfect. At least according to what their idea of perfection is. With the Xperia you're going to get a serious pro mode in both the video and still image capture along with raw image capture.

So you can tune the images to your idea of perfection. You get the Photo Pro and Cinema Pro modes. And as you can see there's going to be a bit of a learning curve if you aren't already familiar with using a DSLR or mirrorless camera. If ISO, aperture and focal length are unfamiliar terms to you, that's okay. If you want to get a bit more serious with your smartphone photography, you're in the right place.

This is a great jump-off point for creating your own looks, for showing people the world through the lens as you see it. It's going to take just a little bit more work than a phone whose camera has no pro mode and ones that do all the thinking for you. One of my favorite aspects of Cinema Pro is the fact that you have the option to utilize the color science of the Sony Venice line of filmmaking cameras, which is my dream camera as I alluded to before. Now, I know it isn't the exact same thing, but I like where their head's at with this one. Also the Cinema Pro mode has some seriously pro features, like the ability to lock two points of focus and utilize focal ramping to move between the two as your depth of field changes.

Really cool stuff. I could do a whole review on just these camera features alone, but have no fear. The cameras do offer automatic modes, which will help you through that learning curve. Bottom line, though, you're going to get some pretty solid photos and videos out of this phone. The one thing missing though, which you'll find on most modern phones, or a lot of them anyway, is a night mode.

I did take the phone out and shoot at night at Candy Cane Lane, and in relative darkness, it was not bad at all. The image stabilization is quite effective. One of the areas that I love about Sony is their drive for innovation. They always did some very cool things with their PDAs. So it's wonderful to see what they've done with the Xperia Mark 2, specifically with their overlay or their OS on this device.

Let's get into the user experience. This display's tall, but narrow. So it's easier to one-hand. Matter of fact, it feels great in hand, but it may still be tall for some people Enter Side sense, similar to edge apps on Samsung. I actually like this implementation more.

It's dope. Run through the tutorial on the phone so you can get used to it. And once you do, you can access shortcuts to the apps you choose from any screen or app. Access multi window as well. Speaking of multi window with a phone, this tall the multitasking multi window feature really shines on this device.

You know what else shines? A charging indicator light in the upper right-hand corner of the phone, a nice touch. And this phone is full of nice touches. The SIM tray is more accessible than any other phone. I've used. Figuring that this phone is going to be used by people who want to, you know, shoot a lot of video, a lot of photos they might be removing the micro SD card frequently.

The SIM tray memory tray has a tab on it which allows you to simply pull the tray out with no need of a SIM tool. Other refinements include a side button which you can customize. I currently have it set as a camera shutter and love using it for that purpose. One thing I have to admit that I generally do not care for on phones, the side mounted fingerprint reader which the Xperia has. At the risk of sounding hypocritical, I actually liked this implementation.

Not that it's particularly different than others but the size of this phone puts the scanner right where my thumb sits on my right hand and right where my index finger hits from my left hand. In other words, the slim build of this phone puts this scanner naturally where my fingers will hit it from either hand, nice. Rounding out the feature set you get a 4,000 milliamp-hour battery which supports wireless charging and rapid PD charging which will get you to 50% charge in 30 minutes. The phone is also IP65, 68 water resistant. So my final thoughts.

The Xperia is one heck of an experience. You won't be disappointed by anything this phone has to offer, if you can weather the cost. This one is retailing at full cost for $1099. Despite that though, this phone is good for business. It offers some things, other phones don't which ultimately means that it offers the market and you more options.

And that's never a bad thing. Hey, if there's anything about this phone that I didn't answer in my review, any questions you may have go ahead and leave those in the comments below. I'll get to them. We don't take it lightly that you spent your time watching with us. I'm Tshaka Armstrong for reviews.

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Source : Reviews.org