Sony Xperia 5 II | Eight Months Later Re-Review By Tech Spurt

So, the eventual release of the Sony, Xperia 5 mark iii, is just around the corner, with any bloody luck, at least, and I'm as giddy and gay as a Nigel garage upon hearing of the burning down of a migrant detention center. But as it's not quite here, yet I thought I would gird my loins by returning to the excellent predecessor from 2020. One of my favorite smartphones of last year. In fact, the Sony Xperia 5 mark ii, especially as you may well find some great deals on this Wii bugger here, with the impending arrival of its successor. So here's my full Sony, Xperia 5, mark ii, re-review for anyone who missed my original verdict last year and to see if I'm still head over heels, for this huge tall, glass member and for more than the latest and greatest tech. Please do poke subscribe and hitting that notifications bell cheers now.

Sony's design hasn't really changed up at all for the Xperia 5 mark iii. So we already know what to expect from this one: a tall bugger with pleasingly slender girth, making it a great fit in the hand. Sadly, it is still only available in black and blue, despite all of my hopes, that Sony would release more vibrant colors right here in blight. But I've got to say the Xperia 5 mark ii is still in great nick. There are a few little scuffs around the bottom edge, and that is it after several months of abuse that gorilla glass 6, finish front and back has really proved its worth, and you know that this thing has bounced off a fair few hard surfaces in those past few months as well, because it's the slipperiest thing I've ever held in my entire life.

It's literally as if somebody has taken a slab of lord and rubbed it all over a caliper. It's even ended up in the bath and the sink a couple of times as well, but thankfully it is full ip68, water and dust resistance, so no troubles there at all. My only other major complaint besides the slipperiness is the sheer number of buttons slapped onto that right edge. So, as well as the standard power button which has the built-in fingerprint sensor and the volume rocker you've also got a dedicated Google Assistant button and a frigging camera shutter button beneath that, and at the time I reviewed the Xperia 5 mark ii, I didn't really find it much of a problem. I never accidentally knocked the Google Assistant button, for instance that wasn't really an issue, but since then we've also emerged from lockdown, and that means I've been going out in the car quite a bit.

I've got a little clamp in the car to stick the phone in to use it as a sat nav while I'm driving- and you bet of course, as soon as you stick it in that clamp, many of those buttons are being simultaneously mushed and the phone just goes absolutely bananas, and on top of that, the frictionless design means that the Sony, Xperia 5 mach 2, does tend to slip a bit even in that clamp at maximum tightness. So, of course, that means that then, all of a sudden, the Google Assistant, button's being pressed the volume rockers are being nudged all kinds of stuff and yeah. I realize that's quite a specific problem to me, but if you've got a similar sort of clamp that you use in your car or your desk or anything then just bear in mind. You're probably going to have to rethink your strategy and, while I'm in full-on gripe mode as well, that bottom speaker on the Xperia 5 mark ii is basically just an open gash, which means that all kinds of grit and dirt and filth gets in there. You've got to get in there with a pin and try and clean out occasionally now the Sony Xperia 5 mark ii was sadly riddled with quite a few weird little bugs when I first reviewed it.

But the majority of these have since been exterminated, and thankfully no new and notable chicanery has cropped up. There's just the one persistent bug left and that is that sometimes I'll pull the phone out of my pocket go to use the fingerprint sensor, and I'll see a little message saying it's been locked for too many unlock attempts not sure what's going on there, but it's especially annoying on the Xperia 5 mark ii, as there's no face and lock the Xperia 5 mark ii comes absolutely stacked with handy features, though like the proper one-handed mode, which is definitely useful as reaching at the top of that super tall display can be tricky, while the 21x9 finish is perfect for split screen multitasking with a pair of apps, but undoubtedly one of the best features still is Sony's fresh gaming mode, which makes the Xperia 5 mark 2 one of my favorite go-to smartphones for gaming on the move. The game enhancer is overflowing like a well clogged toilet with all kinds of useful tools. You've got the power boost feature if you're blasting through the likes of gentian impact on maxed out settings, and I only saw a couple of little stutters with this active even during a fairly lengthy session. You've also got the four cassettes to prevent you from being disturbed and best of all that AHS power control mode.

This allows you to keep the Xperia 5 mark ii plugged in all afternoon long. If you just fancy doing a good bit of pub g Call of Duty, whatever coming bothered with work or real life and what it does is it basically keeps the phone powered up, but it doesn't charge the battery simultaneously, thus preventing more heat, build up and stopping the phone from throttling it's a great performance all day. Long, superb and Call of Duty fans even have support for Sony's dual shock controller as well. If you have to suck at the touch controls and the performance of the Xperia 5 mark ii is faultless, that snapdragon 865 chipsets is still a beefcake that can handle pretty much anything out there. So don't worry too much about waiting for the mark, 3 with its snapdragon 888 smarts, and also that gorgeous cinema-wide OLED screen is perfect for given a wide, clear view of the action there are no selfie orifices or notches to get in the way, and this gives you a wide scope as well, so no sneaky buggers can creep up on you, while you're gaming you've got for 120 hertz, refresh rate support here on the Xperia 5 mark ii.

It could even simulate 240 hertz with some very clever software shenanigans, and this phone also boasts rapid touch sensitivity as well. You can actually manually customize the sensitivity of that display in those game settings, so you can get it exactly to your Vikings. You've got absolutely no excuse whatsoever from your brains, blown out by a bloody 12-year-old on their school holidays unless you've been hitting the scotch again and that six-inch screen is of course, already marvelous for a good bit of Netflix action too. I definitely don't miss the 4k resolution of Sony's flagship phone, because the compact finish of the Xperia 5 mark ii means that full HD plus visuals are perfectly crisp while colors are proper punchy and the brightness thankfully, proves strong enough for a good bit of outdoor play. Even when the sun is blasting down on your baldy bones and Sony has, of course, as always, absolutely pumped this thing full of audio smart, so that stereo speaker setup for one works.

An absolute charm. You don't have to have any headphones to hand, but the good news is that Sony has retained that headphone jack up top as well, which these days are rarer than a panda stiff, certainly for phones around this sort of price point. You've got high-res audio support. Of course, when you're all wired up else, you've got a good bit of DAC action, apex and all of that plus Sony's on DSE ultimate, that's the digital, sound enhancement engine for rescuing crappy, compressed tracks. Now Sony has stuffed a four thousand William capacity battery into the Xperia 5 mark ii, and I found that yeah there's the occasional day when I run out of charge.

Just before I hit the hair, usually that's when I've been using it as a sat nav for a couple of hours, I've been doing lots of skype and some really heavy duty, stuff, otherwise more stairs. I end up staggering into bed getting all tucked up with teddy, with at least 20 to 30 left in the tank and yeah. Sadly, there's no support for wireless charging here on the Xperia 5 mark ii, unlike a lot of rivals around this sort of price point. But at least you do get that adaptive charging feature, which means that you can leave the Xperia 5 mock, 2 plugged in all night long. It won't overcharge and therefore potentially bulk, the battery over time.

That's just as well, because you don't have the fast charge capabilities of again some rivals at this sort of price and last up, why you don't have the same glorious point and shoot ease of use as something like the Google Pixel 5. The Sony Xperia 5 mark ii does a bang-up job of capturing every glorious part of your wonderful life, assuming you're, actually doing more these days than just occasionally scuttling off to Tesco to stock up on bog roll and Jeff cakes. That's because the Xperia 5 mark ii sports the same triple lens mass setup as the Xperia 1 mark ii, giving you the ultra-wide angle and telephoto alternatives to that capable primary shooter for extra flexibility and yeah they're, all 12, megapixel lenses and sure 12 megs sounds a bit ass compared with the 48 64 or even 108 meg lenses that you get on a lot of smartphones, even budget efforts. But remember it's not the number of megapixels that counts. It's what you do with them.

My test shots still look great when they are viewed back on a monitor, they're, packed with detail, and they bought natural looking colors. Even when I'm up against strong outdoor lighting or ambient indoor environments. The Xperia 5 mark ii also impresses for low-light photography, snapping a series of shots across a range of exposures and blending them together to get surprisingly bright picks without much grain. Thankfully, you do still get a realistic reproduction when you swap to the other lenses as well, although the ultra-wide angle, shooter, isn't as impressive as rivals from Oppo and VIVO from 2021 with the usual fish eye distortion. All too obvious.

Meanwhile, that telephoto effort can get you closer to the action when needed great for touristy picks. Now that we're actually allowed to travel more than 10 feet from our bloody front door. But I have to say one of the major advantages of the Xperia 5 mark ii and all of Sony smartphones compared with a lot of the rivals around this sort of price point is the excellent eye autofocus combined with the burst shot feature, and this can capture up to 20 picks a second which is great when you're trying to shoot active subjects who are off their tits on ice cream and harbor. As for any photographers, who want more precise controls, where you're definitely well served by the Xperia smartphones, because you've got that photo pro mode with full raw support, you can fiddle with all the major settings, just as you would on a DSLR camera and see the results right there on the screen and for anyone who's, not quite pro, maybe just an amateur photographer wants to get into it as a hobby. Well, the good news is that Sony will be bringing a simpler, more easy to get to grips with version of the photo pro mods to the Xperia 5 mark ii, most likely when the Xperia 5 mark 3 is finally released.

I still get perfect mileage out of the cinema pro mode as well, which serves up full control over the ISO levels, the white balance and so on, while also giving you a selection of filters to piddle about with which completely changed the mood of your home movies and the slow motion results at 4k resolution at 120 frames per second or simply stunning. This is all definitely great stuff if you're trying to make it as a wacky, indie movie, director or whatever. Otherwise, you can just use a good old standard, video mode, which does a great job of serving up good, looking footage with clear, audio and solid image, stabilization and then last up yeah, there's that eight megapixel selfie shooter, which sadly still is about as impressive as a tadpole's fart, I'm still finding that quite often my photo results are a bit soft or grainy, or just a bit of poo, especially when I'm shooting indoors. I got a lot of blurry fuzzy snaps, which I had to chuck no matter how still I tried to keep my hand and yeah, I'm even talking about it like breakfast time here before it even had a sniff of scotch, so selfie fans may want to look elsewhere, but everyone else should be more than impressed by this Sony, Xperia 5 mark ii, it's brilliant for pretty much everything you could possibly think of doing with the smartphone, including, of course watching movies chilling, with some tunes a bit of gaming action and selfie. Cam aside, I really get on with the optics very well, especially the cinema pro mode, because I am a bit of a wanker like that.

I do like shooting Monte looking video so anyway, a few little gripes aside, I do really like the Xperia 5 mark 2, I'm looking forward to checking out the Xperia 5 mark iii, which doesn't look like a massive evolution, basically just a fresh new chipset. Hopefully, you've worked out some little kinks uh with the mark ii version as well, so stay tuned for an in-depth, unboxing and review of that, hopefully imminently if you've been using the Sony, Xperia 5, mark ii or any of the other Sony flagship stuff would be great to hear your thoughts down in the comments below. Please do poke subscribe during that notifications bell and have yourselves a lovely ass rest of the week. Cheers everyone loves you do you.

Source : Tech Spurt