Sony XPERIA Pro: A Truly Professional Phone! By JuanBagnell

Yeah, this is something a little different. The Xperia pro is already back in the mail flying back home to Sony, but spending a couple of weeks with it. I definitely have some thoughts now before I jump in I want to hear from. You are the word pro so watered down for consumer electronics that we can't save it comments down under the video go. The timing is kind of weird, I mean that's fair right, 2020 interrupted the normal flow of releases even from the largest brands, so it shouldn't be too surprising that a pet project from Sony would be delayed even more than a mainstream phone might have been, but digging into it. I need people to remember a very important idea.

Tech can exist. That is not made specifically for you, but if we don't judge it fairly for what it is, then the people who do want or need something like this. They might miss it. A tiny niche audience deserves the same quality and consistency of review as the person who might enjoy a video on the top-selling mainstream phone of the year and come on if you're, a real tech, geek you'll want to talk about what's out there, even if it's not the phone in your pocket. So let's chat the Xperia pro is wild.

I'm honestly shocked it made it to market. Even this late, literally only Sony would tackle a project. This ambitious, it's a niche of a niche and delivered with the same Sony. Bravado I've come to love over the last couple of years. The pro reinforces the idea that the Xperia team is working very closely with the Sony, camera division and when Sony camera engineers say something is for pros.

They mean the pro. I don't do the spec reading, I figure you can look that up all on your own. The Xperia pro has all the specs we good great, because immediately we need to talk about whom this phone is for. This phone is built to be incorporated into a content creator or broadcast workflow. Now we say stuff like that, a lot.

What phone is best for content creators, and then we jump through hoops to try and make the companies with the largest advertising budgets the winner? The main trick here is something I've never seen on a phone before HDMI input. We can send video out from a phone pretty easily. I do it a lot on this channel using your phone screen for another gadget is something different and feeding another camera into a mobile live stream is huge. Yes, a lot of cameras can use the Wi-Fi, but that's not always a great solution, it's prone to interference in busy areas, and you can have issues with the data connection when Wi-Fi is used to control a camera. If you want the best quality and stability, you still gotta go with the cable.

It's true for audio true for broadband and true for video. The HDMI is a little more than just a passive monitor, though the video input can be routed and used like one of the built-in cameras on the phone enabling this Xperia to be a 5g brain for your nicer camera fire up some streaming, software, like stream, labs or stream yard point. The camera input to the HDMI feed and your image quality out in the field just got a significant shot in the arm. This is where the pro gets more interesting. This phone becomes a modular way to upgrade a cinema or broadcast camera, making it a more mobile solution, and this is where pro means something special I've been working in and out of, news beats for over a decade right now, there's a little local news, affiliate that is likely getting remotes done on an iPhone because it's too expensive to upgrade broadcast cameras or employ a team of people to cover a local event.

As part of a camera package, the pro could be the brain and modem for mobile workflow using existing camera hardware. This is a big step above that dismissive idea, like maybe a vlogger could use something like this. We can use one premium gadget to replace a handful of other accessories and, let's say, you're a pro photographer. I don't think the separate monitor and broadcasting tools will be huge hooks for you, but having an USB 3 connection hooked up to a 5g radio means you have crazy, fast photo. Backups, quick, tangent consumers think airdrop file transfers are nifty, and they are kinda handy when you need to shoot over a JPEG over to your pal, but how about an afternoon session of raw files, you're going to fiddle around waiting for Wi-Fi transfer, you're, just going to twiddle your thumbs.

While you wait for an USB 2 transfer, speed, see that's why consumers probably dig airdrop iPhones with lightning connectors. That's still an USB 2 connection. I don't think USB 2 is very pro hooking up my iPhone SE to the a7 s3. Well, first, it just doesn't work on its own. You need a companion app for the phone to talk to the camera because apple.

Even then, the lightning connector can't talk to the camera unless you plug in an additional power cable. Not only is it USB 2, it's also not properly powered, it's so backwards and regressive, and I can hear sycophants already regurgitating some other influencer's opinion squawk. Why would anyone want to do this from a phone squawk and that's how well apple pr has programmed the tech? Enthusiast sector apple gets to charge more deliver less and then because they're popular it creates a self-reinforcing cycle of logical fallacy. Lots of people like apple, so apple's way of doing things must be correct, yeah, not so much if you buy that really expensive iPhone. Pro you'll probably still need another computer to do stuff like this well, but if you buy a Xperia pro, it handles this kind of stuff out in the field all by itself, and you don't need to break out a laptop.

The camera can use the data connection of the phone to launch a ftp file transfer. I can upload directly to my nos really easily or even just backing up locally to the phone is so much faster and if your response to something like this is a dismissive, but how many people like really need that? Obviously not many, but those professionals really would benefit from these capabilities. And that's the point, that's why we call something pro. It makes me kind of sad that, right now someone is rocking a 1300 iPhone thinking that it's the best a phone can get for creative types when in actuality, iPhones are not the best options for handling files, using accessories and being a decent companion computer, but I digress this part of the rant over. Let's get back to the opera, I do want to talk about the build, not in a gimmicky.

Well, it felt really nice in the hand kind of way, but that it's refreshing to see a pro device built to a more rugged, spec and port covers which are all toolless to open. That seems silly to say, but even with 500 gigabytes of storage built in a professional might need to access a memory card quickly and fiddling with some pin tool is not it. It's not it at all, but average consumers never use memory cards. Okay, so if you're Samsung, then you just get rid of a terrifically useful feature, cool. Considering the target demo, though, and I would anticipate rough use, I think a screen protector is basically mandatory on a product like this.

The casing is also designed around signal reception with a crazy array of internal antennas, a quad reception implementation to help with any orientation the phone might be in and some specialty tools on board to measure signal strength. So the Xperia will report signal, strength, connection direction and orientation and properly inform the user. Just exactly what network they're connected to, because pros will care about that. It is kind of fun that Sony is leveraging picture picture-in-picture for the 5g monitor. I really used that while I was hiking around Venice Beach looking for millimeter wave, it is the best use of picture-in-picture I've found outside Google Maps.

Lastly, in praising what Sony is doing here, opera's are easily a generation ahead in power management working out in the field. I can assign HS power control to activate when streaming on stream labs then hook the Xperia up to an external battery, and this takes load off of the phone battery and reduces some internal heat generated by the rest of the phone, not only maximizing performance by minimizing throttling, but also saving, wear and tear on the internal battery. This is a huge feature on the current premium experience right now and one I expect pros would appreciate, especially when paired with the new endurance mode, which takes this power management even a step, further, limiting other areas of the phone to max out performance on a singular or specific task. I don't want this in the video. I do not want this in the video.

Oh, this is going in my video now. This is all in my main Sony camera video as we speak, uh live-streaming on an a7 s3. The trick you told me about was perfect to keep something running in the background yeah bad. You were right if there was nothing running it for some reason dropped to a millimeter drain. The battery give me the signal real, quick TK.

We should break this down. I mean I'm actually doing this on Verizon LTE on my back porch, because I live out in the burbs now and there's no way we're getting millimeter wave anytime soon. But this is the setup, and I'm sure yours is probably fairly similar. I've got a square 7x3. I've got a Xperia pro connected to it over HDMI, and then I'm also I'm running a cabled headset you're using Bluetooth right.

So yes, I wanted to be a little different. I realized that you did the cable headset based last time, so what I'm using is I'm using um the just standard pair of Bluetooth? Well, not standard the liberty, air 2 pros from sound core, which I found to be actually very good for ourselves. I'm a big fan, yeah yeah, yeah sound core for the win um and I have it obviously connected to the exterior pro and that's where the audio is being fed. So I love that that setup, but I really want. I really want to highlight that it's camera cell phone broadcast and that's that's the live-streaming solution that we're both using and I can take you, and we can go for a walk.

That's literally the expression. I want you to understand the setup that we're talking about right now, except it being slightly heavier than my normal setup, because I tried holding it. I was like trying to do a Casey experience right where my wife was trying to help me with the fit with the footage, and my arm was tired, yeah. This is heavy. I hope you guys enjoyed this little example.

I hope you guys enjoyed the video Sony is hitting it out of the park. Furthermore, I hope really 2021. With this note. With this start of the year uh with this device just keeps going, I want them to keep going um and I would love to be able to, like, I said, spend some more time with us. So we'll see we'll see how the future is um and uh yeah.

Now I'm really glowing in this video, but we shouldn't overlook the timing of this release, and it is its the toughest aspect of Sony's project. Here, new phones are already coming out with new processors. The main argument made for the pros existence and looking at the people who I feel would most genuinely be interested in the pro I'm not worried about onboard camera, tech or processing power. It's always nice to have the latest and greatest soc, but a snapdragon 855 is still overkilled for a lot of local processing needs. There really isn't much software that's going to make an 865 blink in 2021.

If it's used for a streaming or broadcast solution, the HDMI and millimeter wave 5g matters more than having the absolute fastest local processing and, if we're worried about the camera attack, the cameras on board are from the Xperia 1 mark ii, and they're still stellar. Performers Samsung is still sticking with a similar main sensor for the main shooter on the s21 and Apple has only just caught up to this sensor size on their absolute most expensive top phone option, Sony pr seems really intent on positioning this for professional use. They aren't really setting their sights on average consumers plus, I just think it's cute when they talk about gaming. The main bullet point on Sony's marketing. One sheet is PlayStation remote play like it's cool, we're seeing decent jumps in GPU performance, but that doesn't matter as much if you're streaming a game to your phone.

So I can't do that tech reviewer thing. I can't play that game. Won't someone please think of the average consumers who are spending well over a thousand dollars on a phone nun. No, I'm good! I want products that live up to their pro labels when I shop a camera, I'm not looking to spend premium cash on the best green box full auto mode. When I shop a studio grade microphone, I'm not that concerned about how well it might work for a novice, twitch streamer in an untreated, noisy bedroom with their air-cooled PC case right next to them on the desk, I'm so tired of boiling everything down to the lowest consumer use possible.

Sony is making a far bolder claim with this pro label and hilariously. It might even be a bit too much phone for me as a solo producer, but when Sony talks up ecosystem they hit really hard. When it comes to imaging the more I played with it, the more I would have loved to have some kit, like the Xperia pro as part of a camera and audio package. When I was working a pocket now, it really makes sense in my brain. After doing a little work with local news stations or even outfitting high school and college journalists, with something like this to teach about how to produce remotes and how to work out in the field, it feels so hack to make my wacky YouTube thumbnail, face looking at the high price tag and then say something like there's nothing else, quite like it but legit.

Let's say you owned a nice thousand dollars phone, and you wanted a 5g link for remote work on a camera, and you also wanted an external mounted display for that camera. It would be pretty easy to hit or surpass this price tier depending on the accessories you choose. It just makes sense to me that there are several pockets of consumers, but mostly businesses, where this makes a lot of sense to combine a handful of accessories and have a pocket computer that can cover your phone needs to. We should celebrate that focus on truly professional grade gear. I love this.

I want more, as always thanks so much for watching for sharing these videos subscribing to the channel supporting your favorite content. Creator has never been more critical than it is today, so I greatly appreciate those of you looking at the links in the descriptions underneath my videos maybe shopping a little merch. That kind of stuff really does help keep production rolling on this channel. You can catch a full list of all my current affiliates and partnerships on some gadgetguy. com, or you might consider joining the list of names scrolling on your screen from my patreon.

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Source : JuanBagnell