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00:00Hey, what's up, MKBHD here, coming at you from the brand new soft long sleeve available
00:08at shop.MKBHD.com, along with the rest of our lineup that's available shipping in time
00:12for the holidays.
00:13So definitely make sure you get in on that link below the like button.
00:16But I am holding in my hands right now a Sony smartphone, but not just any phone.
00:21I'm holding the phone with the most impressive hardware camera setup of any smartphone out
00:27right now.
00:29But there is a catch.
00:30So this is the Sony Xperia Pro-I.
00:34So we've been having some conversations around the studio about how some companies treat
00:37their smartphone lines, basically based on how much money it makes that company.
00:42So like Apple and Samsung spend a ton of energy on their phones because a ton of their money
00:48comes from how good their phones are.
00:51But Microsoft, for example, makes so much of their money in enterprise that a consumer
00:56phone doesn't really move the needle for them, whether it succeeds or not.
01:00And same argument could be made for Google, who's mostly an ads company.
01:03So the Pixel doesn't really have to be a world-class phone for Google to be okay.
01:08So then there's Sony.
01:10And Sony makes a lot of stuff.
01:12They make the PlayStation 5.
01:14They make the Sony Alpha cameras.
01:16They run movie studios.
01:18They've got a lot going on making them money.
01:20And they also happen to make smartphones too, sure.
01:23But the smartphones are not one of the high priority things.
01:26So it shouldn't surprise anyone that a full year after we found ourselves wondering why
01:30people don't buy Sony's super interesting, super niche smartphones, they're back at it
01:36again with another one with another ridiculous set of quirks and features.
01:40This phone has a 4K, 120 Hertz OLED display.
01:45I'll say that again, a 4K, 120 Hertz OLED display.
01:51Again, in that unconventionally tall 21 by 9 aspect ratio that makes the six and a half
01:54inch screen look narrow, but also still be easy to hold.
01:58It's got all the buttons on the side, including a dedicated camera shutter button with the
02:03half press for autofocus and a second press for snapping the shot, plus a second custom
02:08button alongside it that launches their custom made built-in video pro app on this phone.
02:14It's still got the underrated tool list SIM card tray, which is back to back with the
02:19rare micro SD card slot for adding up to a terabyte of extra storage to the phone.
02:25There is a high quality headphone jack up top too, naturally.
02:29And this phone has an eyelet at the corner for a wrist strap, because of course it does.
02:33And also in classic Sony fashion, this phone is called the Sony Xperia Pro-I.
02:39But so they had the Xperia 1 and then they had the Xperia 1 Mark III with eyes representing
02:47the three.
02:48And so now this is the Pro-I, it's like they're trying to make it as confusing as possible.
02:52But the cherry on top of everything is this phone is $1,799 and launches in a month.
03:00Classic Sony.
03:01But like I said at the beginning, this is what makes the phone.
03:04The Pro-I has an incredible hardware system.
03:07That's what I want to talk about in this video.
03:09You would think with this incredible hardware, it takes the best photos and videos.
03:14We'll get to that in a second.
03:15But yeah, this is really impressive.
03:18So Sony Xperia I has a ridiculous, massive one inch sensor for that main camera.
03:25Now it's also flanked by a 12 megapixel ultra wide camera up top.
03:29And then there's also a depth sensor and a 2x telephoto camera below it.
03:33But let's talk about that main camera.
03:35Smartphone camera sensors have been getting larger and larger lately, reaping all the
03:39benefits, all the light gathering, all the shallow depth of field.
03:42As a result, this phone has the largest we've ever seen, a full one inch diagonal.
03:48So for some perspective, the iPhone just moved from a 1 over 2.55 inch sensor last year to
03:54a 1 over 1.9 inch bigger sensor this year.
03:58The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro with their headline making new sensor, it's 1 over 1.3 inches,
04:02which is matching the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.
04:06And Xiaomi's Mi 11 Ultra with one of the largest camera bumps of all time has a 1 over 1.1
04:11inch sensor.
04:12This Sony Xperia I, the I stands for imaging turns out, is all about this massive new barrier
04:18being broken of a full one inch diagonal sensor.
04:22That is the largest sensor ever fit into the back of a phone.
04:26Now, some of you who are in the photography world might recognize that's the same size
04:29sensor that's in their world-class point and shoot cameras.
04:32The RX100 Mark 7 has a one inch sensor.
04:35And I know that's true because this is the sensor from the RX100 Mark 7.
04:40Those two devices have the same one inch CMOS sensor inside for taking photos and videos.
04:46That is, that is pretty incredible for a smartphone.
04:49It kind of feels like a camera first that happens to have a phone attached to it.
04:54So it's already really interesting for that, but wait, there's more.
04:58So most smartphone lens elements inside are typically plastic.
05:02A lot of people didn't know that.
05:03I actually learned that pretty recently.
05:05Up until the main outside lens, which is glass, all plastic on the inside, but not the Sony.
05:11The Sony is using a spherical glass lens elements inside.
05:15It's very expensive to do that, but for the sake of optical quality, that's what they
05:19wanted and that's what they built in.
05:21And on top of all of that, if you've been watching the videos, we've seen some big sensor
05:25smartphones before.
05:26And what's my first complaint always, when I take a closeup photo with a shallow background,
05:31there's often a lot of fringing around that main subject.
05:34And so that Samsung feature from a couple of years ago, variable aperture would have
05:39been kind of neat.
05:41Well it's back.
05:42So Sony has built back in the changing aperture feature from the Galaxy S9 days.
05:47So there's a toggle in the camera UI that can physically close down the aperture from
05:52F 2.0 to F 4.0.
05:55So in broad daylight or in well-lit conditions with a closeup subject, you can stop down
05:59like a real photographer and actually get more in focus.
06:03And the difference is actually noticeable both in the sharpness of the subject and the
06:08blurriness level of the background.
06:09You love to see it.
06:11On top of all of that, this phone also has its own dedicated Sony built Bionz image processor
06:16that allows for super fast 20 frames per second shooting with 315 autofocus points covering
06:2290% of the frame.
06:24And it'll shoot 4K video up to 120 frames per second.
06:28It's incredible.
06:29So sounds like the hardware of this camera is pretty incredible, right?
06:33I mean, it is, it's not a trick question, it really is.
06:36But take a look at these two photos side by side.
06:39Which one would you pick as better?
06:42Well, most people, especially side by side, would pick the one on the left.
06:48That's the iPhone 13 Pro up against the Sony.
06:51Well what about this picture?
06:53Same idea.
06:54There's clearly a difference between them.
06:55And there's a reason that most people are picking the photo on the left.
06:59Obviously the brighter photo catches your eye usually the most easily, but camera enthusiasts
07:03will probably also notice the better dynamic range on the left too.
07:07That's because Sony doesn't really do all that much computational photography nearly
07:11as well as some of the most popular smartphones with the multi-frame HDR processing.
07:16So the Sony result is a more natural, less HDR-y, possibly more true to life photo technically,
07:24but often one that looks a bit more dull or more flat.
07:28And then also if you're thinking, wait, why doesn't the background blur look massively
07:32different from the iPhone?
07:34I thought there was a huge one inch sensor in there.
07:37And you'd be right to think that because we've arrived at the catch, which is that, yes,
07:42this phone does have a one inch sensor inside physically, pretty crazy, but this phone doesn't
07:49actually use the entire one inch sensor from corner to corner.
07:53So when I held up the phone next to the RX 100 earlier, yes, these two things have the
07:57same sensor, but clearly the pocket camera is a lot thicker.
08:01There's way more Z-axis space to work with for all that high quality glass in front of
08:06the sensor.
08:07Great.
08:08On a smartphone, the optics have to be, I mean, you can see it's super, super small.
08:12It's pushed up much closer to the sensor.
08:15And unfortunately they're so close to this one that the image circle covered by the lens
08:19doesn't actually cover the whole sensor.
08:22So you know, since lenses are circles, when they let in light, that light travels down
08:26the barrel and projects an image circle onto the back of the camera.
08:30And that's picked up by the rectangular sensor back there.
08:33So our photos are all rectangles, but that's because they're cutting the rectangular image
08:37out of the entire circle that's being projected back there.
08:41So in this phone's case, the image circle is actually smaller than the one inch sensor.
08:46So the photos it's spitting out are a subset of a subset of that silicon.
08:51It's actually a 12 megapixel crop of that whole 20 megapixel one inch sensor in there
08:57to begin with, effectively making it a one over 1.3 inch sensor that's actually being
09:03used.
09:04And then dual aperture.
09:06Like I said, it's really cool.
09:07It's great and all that to have with a big sensor, but F2 as the maximum aperture is
09:13actually not as wide as most of the other highest end smartphone cameras out today,
09:18which are around F1.5, F1.6, letting in even more light than this.
09:24So when you combine these two realizations, that the effective sensor size is smaller
09:29and that the max aperture is also smaller.
09:32It turns out the Xperia i is actually gathering less light and has less overall bokeh than
09:39phones like the iPhone 13 Pro or Galaxy S21 Ultra or Pixel 6.
09:45What a wild quirk slash feature to have that it's got this crazy huge sensor, but it's
09:52unable to use all of it.
09:53Maybe in a future version, they were able to use more Z space or maybe a larger overall
10:00camera cutout on the back.
10:01I don't know exactly what fixes this, but yeah, that's one of the most interesting things
10:07I've seen in a phone in a long time.
10:09And there's obviously more to a camera or more to a phone than just the camera.
10:14But when it's the Xperia i for imaging and when it's $1,800, and when it's got a one
10:19of a kind sensor, that's kind of what you're looking at.
10:22So yeah, this particular phone is one I would probably only recommend to people who obviously
10:26have a lot of money to burn, but are really looking for the manual control offered by
10:31the apps that Sony ships with these phones.
10:33Kind of the same way they did with the Xperia 1 III, still amazing.
10:37All the manual control with videos too, the focus slider, everything built in, it's great.
10:42But you've got to really know what you're getting yourself into, and this is not a daily
10:45for most people.
10:47But that being said, I am really glad this exists just because not like it's some specialty
10:54crazy one inch sensor, one of a kind thing, but really smartphones cameras are all sort
10:59of leveling up again.
11:01And that's something I like to see because it feels like one of the biggest things that
11:04still differentiates all these really good phones at the high end.
11:08So yeah, let's keep getting smartphone cameras better every year.
11:13Love to see it either way.
11:15That's been it.
11:16Thanks for watching.
11:17Catch you guys in the next one.
11:19Peace.