Sony Xperia 1 Dolby Digital

Sony Xperia 1: The Phone for Movie Producers and Directors

Sony has announced the release of its new smartphone, Xperia 1 targeted at movie directors and producers who would love to create a Hollywood-like film for less.

That is a big statement given all the things that go into making a good movie and Sony tries to deliver on its promise. You know by now that even low budget movies in Hollywood cost hundreds of thousands of dollars without even looking into the equipment itself.

The Sony Xperia 1 is going to be one of the phones that cost around $1,000; which seems to be a trend these days set by Samsung, Google Pixel, iPhone and others. However, this seems like a bargain when shooting a short film.

Display:

Watching movies from Sony Xperia 1 - Newslibre

The first thing you will notice on the smartphone is the new 21:9 cinema wide 4K HDR OLED display without a notch. The display is amazing at first glance, but that is maybe because it was made by Sony’s TV manufacturer, Bravia. Putting in time and research to pull the same technology used to make images rich in contrast and colour on their TVs, and squeezing it into the 6.5-inch display.

You must be going like what? 6.5 inches? That’s a big phone! It actually kinda isn’t, you can still operate it with one hand because Sony decided to make it longer rather than wider and it looks pretty cool.

Design:

Sleek Design Xperia 1 - Newslibre
The new Xperia 1 has a very sleek design – Newslibre

The design has also changed, most of the Sony’s Xperias all looked the same for a long time and people were getting tired of it. So, they made an ergonomic and more curved redesign. The device is slimmer and lighter. The fingerprint sensor has been returned back to the side of the phone just above the power button.

Camera:

Sony Xperia had made a statement in the first releases with having a bigger camera than all its competitors and being water proof. The Xperia 1 has 3 cameras each with different focal lengths and 12MP adding up to one back camera. That means in total all the cameras add up to 36MP even if they will never state it. The front camera is 8MP.

The lenses are super wide 16mm with f2.4, wide 26mm with f1.6 and telephoto 52mm with f2.4 and 2x optical zoom.

Sony Xperia 1 Three Lens Camera - Newslibre
Sony Xperia 1 has 3 primary back cameras with 12MP each – Newslibre

There is also an eye auto-focus from Sony’s premium Alpha cameras, PDAF, continuous shooting of 10fps, super slow motion in Full HD of max 960 PFS, scanning of 3D objects, exposure and focus adjustments.

Sony added a new app called Cinema Pro exclusively for the Xperia 1 which is inspired by their Cinealta cinema cameras. These cinema cameras have been used by Hollywood directors like James Cameron who made Avatar.

With such inspiration, the Cinema Pro app is obviously aimed at professionals and is very different from the normal camera app. It allows you to see and tweak features such as shutter, white balance, audio levels, ISO and the filter or looks of the video.

Flower Image taken by Sony Xperia 1 - Newslibre
Flower Image taken by Xperia 1 – Newslibre | Photo Credit: Sony Mobile

This is a different step from older Xperia models where the phones obviously had powerful spec cameras, but were always let down by the software and control.

Hardware:

The Xperia 1 comes with 6GB Ram, 128 GB internal storage which you can expand through a microSD card and a powerful 2.8 GHz Qualcomm snapdragon 855 octa-core processor. It also supports LTE CAT 19 with up to 1.2Gbps/150Mbps for network download and upload speeds.

The device also comes with an LED flashlight, HSPA, NFC, Dual-SIM and Bluetooth 5.0.

Software:

The Sony Xperia 1 is coming with Android 9 under the Xperia UI. So far there have not been many complaints over Sony’s customization of Android since the company tries as much as possible to keep its OS functionality and performance as close to the stock Android ROMs as possible.

Sony Mobile also has a very good track record of sending timely security and system updates which offers a great deal of support.

Gaming on Sony Xperia 1 - Newslibre
The Xperia 1 is a great device for mobile gaming

Sony has also added Game Enhancer, which is also on their Xperia 10 and 10 Plus that allows you customize system settings for all the games on your phone or each of them. Allowing you to set things like hardware performance, notifications and also be able to record yourself using the front camera during a game.

Huawei and Samsung already had something close to this. With Samsung, you can use Game Live and the Game Center to make similar settings.

Battery:

Lastly, the battery is at 3,330mAh, which is decent but could be better. Sony has always had impressive batteries on their premium Xperia smartphones, but we doubt this one will go beyond a day with power usage or when one taps into most of the phone’s functions.

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