Sony Xperia 5 ii | Unboxing & Full Tour | Camera, Gaming & more! By Tech Spurt

Sony's incredible Xperia 1 mark ii remains one of my favorite flagship smartphones of 2020. So far, often the kind of impressive camera smarts and incredible media chops that have most of the flagship phones wet in their pants with wonder. But you know what looks even better. That would be this weed crappie here the Xperia 5 mark ii, which is a more compact version of the Xperia 1 mark ii, with pretty much all the same great features packed in there, but 400 pounds shaved off the asking price uh. Yes, please now we'll of course be bringing you a full review of the Xperia 5 mark ii, but for now let's whip it out the box. Take you on a full on tour of the hardware and the software, so you know exactly what to expect and for more than the latest greatest tech.

Please do poke subscribe and ding that notifications bell cheers so once again, very subtle packaging from soy, very straightforward and simple, not giving away the excitement and the wonders that lie within and what you get in here is obviously the phone itself, a highly thrilling bit of literature, charging adapter with the muse and pop-up action and whooping do a type-c, USB cable, and that is your lot highly thrilling stuff, but now, of course, the bit that actually counts. The Sony Xperia 5 mark ii, the initial impressions definitely very strong. Indeed, once again, Sony has crafted something that feels absolutely fantastic in the hand. You've got basically the same dimensions as last year's Xperia 5, except the mark ii is a much skinnier at just eight millimeters still feels like a premium slab through and through so anyways. It's 163 grams actually feels a bit heftier than that when you actually clutch it, but not to a sinister degree or anything like that, and as you can see, there, you've got more rounded corners now as well, and that definitely seems to help when you're clutching it.

So you don't get those sharp edges digging in any masochists among you might be a little disappointed that, but certainly feels good to me, and you can grab the Xperia 5 mark ii in either black, which is this model or blue here in the UK uh, but blue is online, or at least you will have to order it from Sony mobile. If you fancy a bit of that and if you're a bit of a butterfingers well, the Xperia 5 mark ii is basically made for you. This is the Jason stat ham of smartphones. You've got gorilla glass, six plate in front and back as well, so hopefully won't scratch up a storm or shutter like an if you drop it on the floor. You've also got full ip68 water and dust resistance as well.

So you can happily kick back in a nice hot bubbly bath and check out a bit of cobra Kai on Netflix, great sure, okay yeah. You might just want to look at some pretty cupcakes on sugar rush, whatever you are into job done. A couple of the design elements of the Xperia 5 mark ii do have me slightly troubled, though uh for one. Of course, you've got that shiny, reflective finish, which means that it will pick up greasy prints like nobody's business, although touch wood the Xperia wall mark ii did a pretty decent job of hiding. That, thanks to the black finish slightly more troublesome, is the fact that it is very busy along this right edge now, because you've now got a Google Assistant button added right down here at the bottom next to the dedicated camera shutter button, and I'm not a fan of these dedicated Google Assistant buttons at the best of times, but I reckon I'm going to be knocking that non-stop, but hopefully we'll be able to configure that when we actually get the phone all booted up.

So let's just see if we've got some gas in the tank, at least when it comes to sticking your sim card and your micros memory card inside any Sony phone, it's nice and easy. It's a nice pull out drawer. So you don't even need a porky pin device and, as you can see, there is a dual sim blower as well other. Unfortunately, if you do want to bring in a micro, SD memory card that will take up that second sim slot as you'll have to decide. Do you want dual sim or do you want expandable memory, but you do get 128 gigs of storage on board here? So hopefully that'll.

Do you all right, so Sony, opera, 5, mark ii is all set up and ready for action and, as usual with all Sony, Xperia smartphones, you get a very stockist version of android 10. Hopefully we'll get upgraded to android 11, imminently uh, but of course, with a few little aesthetic changes to make it more distinctly Sony. So, of course, as always, I've immediately slapped on my geeky anime background, but of course all of Sony's classic uh wallpapers are here as well, so you can try one of those. Instead, I do still like those horizon papers very funky indeed, and you've got a few sorts of spin-off, uh alternatives of that theme and as well, and then just your classic nature. Stuff and Sony at least offers you the option of installing all the crap weather they used to just shove, onto its phones like booking.

com and all that sort of shenanigans. So thankfully I just said nope, none of that thanks, there's a couple of bits that people might be interested in, for instance, if you buy Sony Xperia 4, and you get three free months of tidal, so you can check that out and of course, the PlayStation app, which is well worth diving into if you've got a PS4. This is like a hub for all of your PlayStation goodness, including spying on your PlayStation buddies and a good bit of remote play action as well, which is of course, fully supported on Xperia 5 mark 2. So you can stream your PlayStation gaming session to your smartphone and play in bed on the bogs wherever you fancy and then, of course, there's that dedicated Google Assistant button just quick push of that, and, as you can see up she pops and to be fair to that button, it is fairly flush actually with the surface of the phone. So it's probably unlikely that you're gonna accidentally press it in that often, although it is again completely pointless because you can simply swipe up from one of the bottom corners to do exactly the same thing.

Call it. The Google Assistant you've got full voice support for it uh. So you know it's fairly unnecessary, and I'm going to flick through the settings, but I can't find any way of disabling or reconfiguring that Google Assistant button, neither which is quite annoying but any who, you've got all those classic Sony features packed on the Xperia 5 mark ii as well, including good, old side sensor, which, as you can see, just calls up a bunch of shortcuts and the likes of the one had the more, which is very helpful indeed, because although it's obviously quite a compact smartphone, quite easy to uh to use one-handed, it is a bit of a stretch to get all the way up to the top end of the screen when you're, using an app or whatever. And when you call up side sense. You've also got that excellent multi-window feature as well.

It's basically just split screen, but this allows you to quickly and easily load up a couple of apps side by side which is perfectly suited to that stretched 21 by nine screen. It's perfect! If you want to watch a bit of YouTube or whatever, while also browsing the web, checking your messages doing whatever you want. Of course, you've got you're, always on display action as usual, so you can check for notifications without actually bothering to pick up the phone and turn it on and then that excellent edge mounted fingerprint sensor as well, just a quick tap of your digit against that scanner and, as you can see straight into your desktops, sadly once again no fears and knock support on the Xperia 5 mark ii. However, although obviously less important in these core video days, where we're all covering up our faces anyway, anyway, I could bang on about the software all freaking day long. But if you want a closer look at some of my favorite features here on the Xperia 5 mark ii, it's a very similar setup to the Xperia wall mark 2 flagships.

So I did a tips and tricks on that. Smartphone go check that out for all. You need to know now. As always, one of the highlights of any Sony, Xperia smartphone is definitely the screen and the visuals here on the Xperia 5 mark ii. Definitely do not disappoint.

You've got a 6.1 inch, OLED display with that 21 by 9 finish. So, as you can see, when you've got that supported cinematic content, it just fills up the entire screen. There's no notch, there's no little uh, selfie cam orifice thing to get in the way, and I've actually heard some people in the morning that it isn't a 4k resolution panel uh, unlike the Xperia 1 mark ii. But to be honest, you had to stick that Xperia 1 mark 2 next to any other flagship smartphone and really study it to sort of see any proper difference in the detail levels. This is a 6.1 inch panel. It's full HD plus you can squish your face right up to this thing, and it will still look absolutely crisp as anything.

It's nice and bright and poppy. As I said, the visibility outdoors will not be a problem. Those colors are looking really, really nice as well they're, not super, super vibrant or anything. They just look nice and natural. So the more vivid hues really shine and contrast- is nice and sharp, as well with those stunningly deep blacks as well.

So it's nice and clear exactly what is going on even in quite gloomy scenes, you've got full control over those display settings as well. So you can dive into the image quality settings. As you can see, you've got the good old creator mode back once again, uh introduced last year on the original Xperia one. You can turn this on full at a time if you want, otherwise it does automatically apply when you stick a bit Netflix on as well and, of course, you've got Sony's usual visual enhancement tools as well, just to boost colors up uh produce more natural, looking contrast and just really sharpen things up as well, if you're watching lower quality content, but while you lose out on those ultra HD visuals here on the Xperia 5 mark ii, Sony has finally added in a high refresh rate, something that was missing from the uh flagship smartphone. But it's great to see it here on the Xperia 5 mark ii and uh yeah.

That definitely makes a difference. Everything looks silky smooth when you're you're flipping about then wow. That is superfast. But of course it's not just about the visuals here on so many smartphones. They always absolutely nail the audio side of things as well, for the full multimedia experience, and it's actually a stereo speaker set up here on the Xperia 5 mark ii, and they're both front facing speakers as well mounted on the very edges there, but not actually on the sides.

So, let's just crank the volume all the way up and see what we got. Video shield TV and also google hasn't bothered to include any stadium support as well, which probably speaks volumes so on top volume reasonably powerful for watching videos streaming podcasts things like that. Uh voices come through nice and clear uh helped along by the fact. The audio is actually directed at your face, but the audio does sound quite flat as well. The likes of vocals and stuff sound, quite tinny uh on that top volume, so you'll definitely want to plug in some headphones to get some Bluetooth action on the go.

If you want to listen to some music or anything like that, thankfully, like the Xperia one mark ii, you do have an actual headphone jack here on the five markers as one of the few flagships where you'll find that and the Bluetooth chops are solid as well. You've got Sony's full DAC support and all the usual uh smarts, of course, so just a quick, tap, and you're all paired up and then, as you can see there good bit of lax. Oh, yes, that should just help to keep the quality of the audio high, even when you're streaming wirelessly, and I love the way that you can choose between the best effort or high quality playback over Bluetooth as well. So you might get a bit of a stuttering action if you choose sound quality, preferred if you're in a busy area and that's not all on the audio phone you've got full Dolby Atmos support here on the Xperia 5 mark ii as well and Sony's digital sound enhancement. Engine ultimate edition is back in action from the Xperia wall mark ii, which can just upscale your compressed tracks to make them sound less CAC.

Now, if you're a mobile gamer, then your pants will be in serious peril, because the Xperia 5 mark ii is liable to make your battles explode in sheer wonder and merriment. First up, like the Xperia one mark ii, flagship smartphone before you've got the snapdragon 865 chipset bunds in here, backed by eight gigs of ram and yeah. It's not the 865 plus, but, as you can see from these benchmark scores who need the plus. This thing will absolutely power its way through anything as usual, when you are getting your game on, you've got that game, enhancer feature which you can call up with a quick tap of that icon. Otherwise, you can also drag it down from the bar as well, and this adds in all kinds of great little features.

So, as you can see, you can boost the performance if needed, to be fair, not really necessary with that 865. The AHS power control feature is fantastic, though that's great news, if you want to keep the Xperia 5 mark ii plugged in and charging while you're gaming and make sure the battery doesn't also try and charge up at the same time, so the phone doesn't overheat, and it doesn't potentially book your battery. I'm also a big fan of the focus settings as well, because that allows you to just hide notifications and calls, and things like that, away from a site, so you're not getting disturbed way busy trying to blow someone's freaking head off, and I definitely recommend disabling likes of side sense and that camera key as well. Just in case, you accidentally activate them in the heat of battle, but enough chatter. Anyway, let's get some Call of Duty action on the go and, of course, we've got the graphics quality set to very high frame rate to max gonna, add in a nice bit of depth of field and a couple of other effects as well, and if you do love cap and fills in Call of Duty, while the Xperia 5 mark ii is the only phone that will be able to run it at 120 frames per second for now at least it might come to other smartphones in the future, but definitely absolutely stunningly.

Fluid action make sure you go into the game mode in the game. Enhancer uh gaming feature as well go to custom and then dive on in there you can see you can actually change up the screen refresh rate from within here, so it is 60 by default. You can boost that up to 120 to make work full use of that 120 hertz display, and you can also boost it up even further double it to 240 hertz, and now you can probably see some serious screen flickering uh going on right now on camera and that's actually an emulation mode. It's supposed to uh just fill in the blanks, as it were, between the frames and just give you a really, really fluid blur free experience. When you're doing you know a racing game, something like that and the Xperia 5 mark ii, also sports 240 hertz touch response rate as well, although, frankly, I'm going to cheat and use the controller so on that 120hz and everything is very silky, smooth, absolutely stunning stuff.

Look at this! That frame rate is just incredible. Oh, oh, oh god, no back into cover back into cover. Oh yeah, three in a row come on this one has to be good, get the tags so yeah, absolutely beautiful stuff, and of course you get that lovely wide view uh with the Xperia 5 mark ii as well, which is definitely a bonus. Ah, now I'm going to try bumping it up to the maximum 240 hertz rate, I'm not expecting to notice much of a difference at all. To be honest, because here my eyes are all the knackered anyway um, so I can just about tell the difference between 90 and 120 hertz and even then it's a bit of a struggle to be perfectly frank, but I think it'll be a lot more obvious in like racing games and things like that.

Anyway, where are all the bad guys seriously a red team just hiding or something oh reloading, cover me and of course I will be fully testing on the battery life on the Sony, Xperia 5 mark ii, for my in-depth review, but you've got a 4 000 William cell in there. So it's vastly increased over the original Xperia 5 from last year. So hopefully we should get a full day. No problem looks like went down about 10 percent in about sort of 30 35-ish minutes of gaming uh. So not too shabby sonny has been a wee bit stingy on the charging front, though you don't actually get the 21 watt uh charger stuffed in the box.

You'll have to buy that separately if you're on a bit fast charge, action, uh and there's no wireless charging support, sadly on Xperia 5 mark ii, although if that helps to keep it nice and skinny, and everything then all good, and if you dive on into those battery settings you'll, see you've once again got somebody's battery care feature. This just helps to prevent the phone from overcharging if you're, leaving it plugged in all night long and so on. The Xperia 5 mark 2 you've actually got a brand-new setting in there as well always called, which basically will always stop the battery from fully charging. So I'll hover around that, as you see they're 90 percent uh, if you give that a little tap, but you can actually uh knock that all the way down to 80 and that'll just doubly protect uh the battery from overcharging make sure you'll get that long-lasting performance. Now this is becoming the longest unboxing in the history of unboxing.

So let's just finish up with a quick squint of this triple lens rear camera setup. Here on the back of the Xperia five mark ii, and it's a very similar setup to the Xperia one mark ii, flagship smartphone, complete with that mass t-star caution for all the lenses just to help out when things are a bit bright, uh, please do give a warm welcome to creepy carol or photo subject of choice and, as you can see, and quickly skip between the three 12 megapixel lenses like so you got your 70?mm telephoto option. You got your 24 mil primary lens and then your 16 mil ultra-wide angle. Now, like the Xperia one mark 2, the Xperia 5 mark ii is uh Boston. Some superfast focus action, including a good bit of eye, autofocus for humans and for animals as well as dogs and cats.

So you make sure they stay and nice and sharp you're once again capable of 20 frames per second burst, shooting as well. Using that autofocus and with full auto exposure too, you don't have a huge number of camera bonus modes packed into the Xperia 5 mark ii, just like standard Xperia phones, Sony likes to keep it as simple as possible, which is definitely commendable. You do have a portrait mode, though, however, which you can just activate with a quick tap there I'll just blur out the background with a both style effect, which you can tweak uh to make it uh stronger or weaker. You can click to the auto video mode with a quick swipe like so nice and straightforward. As you can see, you've got full HDR smarts, which you can get on the go if you've got a high contrast scene to deal with, and if we dive on into the camera settings.

As you can see it shoots at full HD resolution by default, you can bump that up to 60 frames per second. Otherwise, you can also get some 4k on the go. You've got a small selection of other borders modes that you can play around with, including a bit of slow motion action, and you can take a portrait selfie as well, if you flip around to that front facing camera, and it is a basic eight megapixels uh front facing selfie snapper here on the Xperia 5 mark ii, which I was quite surprised by, I thought they'd at least shove a 12 megapixel effort on there. I'm looking really, really soft. With this, this portrait smarts on the go, I think I've probably got some crazy beauty mode.

So basically, if you've ever fancied, looking like et job done, but of course, if you really want to unlock the full potential of the Sony, Xperia 5 mark 2's camera tech you're going to want to dive into the photo pro app now. This is designed to mimic a DSLR control panel, so you've got full access to pretty much any feature you can think of. If you've used the Sony alpha DSLR before you'll be right at home. As you see they're designed to go far beyond the likes of the manual modes on most standard smartphone cameras, you can of course choose which lens you want to use. As usual, you've got full control over all of your levels, so you can get it looking at just the way you like, as you can see, play around with all kinds of different levels of white balance, get some custom settings on the go.

You can piddle about with the focus as well, so it's set to continuous autofocus by default, but you can play around with a manual focus level as well. You can play around with uh levels and histograms all that good shenanigans, if you're diving into the menus as well, just so much stuff packed in here and while the Xperia one mark ii flagship phone did not support raw image capture straight out of the box. Thankfully, the Xperia 5 mark ii does and then, of course, a similar look. You've got cinema pro for all of your video needs, and I definitely really enjoy messing around with this one. You get all kinds of funky effects on the go.

Got lots of different filters that you can mess around with and perfect manual focus controls as well, which allow you to glide seamlessly between two preset points: uh just with a tap of a button and of course I will be covering cinema pro and photo port in my Xperia 5 mark ii, camera review, which hopefully should be coming very shortly. So that, in a nutshell, is the Xperia 5 mark ii, as I say, full review coming soon for my final in-depth verdict on the performance, the battery life, everything else you need to know, but so far shape it up to be again, one of the better smartphones of 2020, certainly one of the more intriguing ones, with some very exclusive, unique features. But what do you guys think would be great to hear from you down in the comments below? Please do put subscribe and ding that notifications bell, if you haven't already and have yourselves a lovely rest of the weekend, cheers everyone loves you, foreign.

Source : Tech Spurt