Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Sony Xperia 1 IV First Look: An Entire Film Studio In Your Pocket”.
This video is sponsored by better help. It just doesn’t seem fair. You shouldn’t get plaudits from reviewers year after year, saying you’re, one of the most improved phone brands, without eventually becoming you know easily recommendable, but when it comes to smartphones, sony is anything but easy. I’M michael fisher – and this is a very early first look at the sony – xperia 1 mark iv yep.
If you watched last week’s video shot at kennedy space center. This is the unreleased smartphone. I teased behind all that pixelated blur a phone i’ve been carrying for a little over two weeks.
So why isn’t this a full review? Well because, even though it’s being announced today in may, the xperia 1 mark iv doesn’t actually ship until september. That means this prototype sony. Let me borrow is substantially undercooked. Simple stuff is just broken. You know the screen doesn’t stay off when i’m in a voice. Call there’s strange banding and color artifacts and dark areas of the display and one of sony’s biggest new features, isn’t even loaded onto this unit.
Yet nonetheless, i asked for an early sample because, as a youtuber, i tend to gravitate toward equipment that makes my life easier on the road and sony is the only company out there right now trying to distill an entire mobile production studio into a smartphone? It’S not just that the cameras keep improving with each generation. The features surrounding those cameras keep getting upgrades as well. Take the screen.
It still packs way more pixels than you’re ever going to need, but now it’s finally bright enough to see even in outdoor settings, even through sunglasses between last week in florida and this week in san diego for the qualcomm 5g summit, my brightness slider has spent an Awful lot of time maxed out and if you’re already wondering what that means for endurance. Congratulations, you watch too many tech videos just kidding. It’S a critical consideration and i’m happy to say, sony took it seriously.
With the new 5 000 milliamp hour battery, the one mark iv survived the most brutal stress test imaginable, a space nerd like me, using its cameras to document an entire day at kennedy, space center 14 hours after i took it off the charger it still had. 11 left again on a camera heavy day, with the display set to 120 hertz, with the brightness maxed out, more often than not there’s also the 3.5 millimeter audio jack, which means i can plug in a wireless microphone for shots like these again. It’S not just about the camera, it’s about the tools you need to make the most out of it and if you don’t want to break out headphones for the playback.
Well, you’re covered there, too, by a pair of symmetrical speakers complete with new drivers and enclosures with more power and better frequency response than before, and sony already had some of the best speakers on a smartphone. Anyway, it’s all crammed into a chassis that you could be forgiven for calling a little too familiar as someone who values form just as much as function and someone who frequently calls out the iphone for iterative dullness. I can’t exactly give sony a pass here.
This isn’t the most exciting design and to make matters worse here in the states, we’re only getting the black version, but at least it’s repeating a design motif, that’s distinctive, with its stretched plank-like aspect ratio and its sheer sighted straightforwardness on one of those sides. You’Ll find the two-stage shutter key: that’s always been there and on the front and back you’ll find the gorilla glass victus that hasn’t toss in a lovely, oleophobic satin finish: a notification led a sim and microsd tray. That’S easy to liberate with just a thumbnail and sony’s default: double dust and water resistance and you’ve got enough pluses, i think, to negate the same old same old design if it sounds like i’m buttering you up before a big letdown. Congratulations! You watched too many. Mr mobile videos and thank you i’ll tell you why i’m a little bit tentative about this device right after a word from a sponsor who’s, actually helping me through some other letdowns right now in a culture like ours, we work at our jobs. We work on our relationships.
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Go to betterhelp.com mr mobile. That’S betterhelp help dot com, slash mrmobile now! Is it easy? Not always no working on yourself is still work and there’s no overnight fix, but that’s the case with most work worth doing and personally i’m glad i started so if you or someone you know is struggling share the link below and thanks to betterhelp for sponsoring this Video that letdown, that i promised, before the break, isn’t a show-stopper, it’s mostly all in the timing, with four months to go before projected availability. This phone’s camera system is still full of wrinkles, noisy video with washed out colors autofocus that doesn’t work at all zoom levels, low, light performance, that’s dubious at best and exposure problems that range from merely washed out to well catastrophic sony’s. Whole camera philosophy is unchanged.
It wants to be able to get pictures right in camera, as they say, instead of relying on post-processing after the capture. That’S the opposite direction. Almost every other phone maker is going and the result is a photographer’s playground. A suite of manual features more extensive than you’ll get anywhere else. The one mark iv includes all the innovations of the past few years of experience. The rapid fire burst mode, the periscope, zoom, racking, focus and cinema pro eye autofocus, and to all that it adds a new telephoto module, one that physically moves to give it. What sony calls the world’s first true optical zoom on a smartphone? What that means is you should be able to push smoothly mechanically between 85 and 125 millimeter equivalent or about 3.5 x to 5.2 x zoom before the phone has to resort to digital cropping. Please note the autofocus isn’t finished on this version of the phone, so these results are not at all representative of a final build, but the trouble is sony has never managed to back up its manual mode feature packing with a truly excellent automatic shooting mode. Oh, it streamlined the software, made it easier to shoot in auto and to be sure, it can turn out some real gems in an ideal setting, but put it in a challenging scenario, an overexposed subject in front of a saturn v sized background. You really don’t want to lose and i’ll say once again that these samples are pre-released. This is an unfinished prototype, but there’s a reason. I’M saying it anyway: it’s because i’ve been reviewing sony phones for years and they’ve never been able to deliver the same effortless high dynamic range as the much cheaper google pixel, or the same zoom capabilities as the still cheaper samsung galaxy ultra line now sony stands are Already down in the comments screaming that that’s not the point of an xperia and look, i i respect all the added capabilities of sony phones. What i’m suggesting is that maybe for the price sony charges, we as consumers, should expect both amazing manual features and amazing automatic performance, but the company just doesn’t seem able or willing to give us both hi meathead, mr mobile. Here, i’m not supposed to be doing this. I’M supposed to be unwinding from the qualcomm 5g summit, but in the course of building this video, i found something interesting. I kept looking at the sample photos from the phone and realizing that, while my complaints about low light performance and dynamic range stand, i loved so much of the output from this camera already in its three months or four months before release state.
So i will say that if sony manages to eke out just a little more processing prowess, this thing could really make it, particularly if you are part of the group i mentioned at the top this vlogger, who wants a whole studio in their pocket. I mean look at this vlogging accessory that sony sells alongside it. It’S an absolute lifesaver in a situation where you really need the main cameras on the back, but you also need to see the shot to frame yourself up. I used this thing to shoot. So much of that asus space edition video and just like when i reviewed the pro i i’m gon na, miss this more than the phone itself when i have to give it all back now, that’s sold separately. But even if you just stick to the phone, there are other upgrades to cover here. Sony has finally improved its selfie camera this year with better optics and 4k hdr, as well as new software, to make it easier for gamers to stream from this phone. I just hope it doesn’t overheat as easily as mine did when shooting video at kennedy space center and to the stable of video photo and cinema pro comes a new custom sony app for 2022 music pro. The idea here is, if you’re a singer or a voice talent, you can record directly to the phone which then uses a subscription cloud service to intelligently separate, vocal tracks from the music and process them separately as well. You get noise reduction, hiss and wind removal special effects. In theory, you should be able to get a better final recording than you could ever get from a mobile microphone. This wasn’t loaded onto my review unit, but i’m eager to test it.
Given how often i find myself in hotel rooms wanting to record voice over that’s, not full of echoes the xperia one mark iv is expected to launch at just a penny shy of 1600 us dollars. Sure that’s a lot to ask for anything: that’s not affordable and most people will be better served by the pixel or the galaxy or the iphone. But the one mark iv is like the mark iii and two and one it isn’t meant for most people. It’S for creators who want a mobile production and streaming studio that fits in their pocket, something they’re likely to write off on their taxes anyway, and we’ll just have to wait until september to see if the final product actually fits that particular bill.
This first look was produced following a bit over two weeks with the pre-production xperia one mark iv prototype running pre-release software provided by sony, but as always, i don’t give manufacturers editorial input, copy approval rights or even a sneak peek of my reviews. My judgments are mine and mine alone. Please subscribe if you’d like to see more videos like this, and let me know in the comments, if you think i should revisit the one mark iv after its september, launch until next time from michael fisher, thanks for watching and stay mobile. My friends, you .