This is the brand new Sony Xperia one Mark V it's the one-five the fifth one uh this is a fourteen hundred dollar pure Enthusiast phone from Sony uh I've been using it came out a couple of weeks ago actually it was announced a couple weeks ago but it's not out yet I've been loving it so far and just Like a lot of their other previous phones there's some incredible Tech here but I've had to take a step back and realize that these phones are endangered species for a reason like Sony phones were already a rare breed to start with I've talked about this in the past videos where I've reviewed the Sony Xperia 5 Mark II and the Xperia 1 Mark III and the one mark IV and the pro I All these phones and this one are loaded with features and manual controls and Technology but they also all have like the smallest Target demographics like the narrowest
band of people who will actually appreciate everything that they do and that's fine there's nothing wrong with a a product like that existing but that also has me kind of worried seeing we lost the HTC We lost LG this this is just in the past couple of years uh and YouTube Commenters would probably have you believing that it was just a negative videos about the smartphones that single-handedly took them down even Though there were huge corporations behind them and that's not true but I would like to try something a a little bit different today because I think Sony right now looks almost exactly like where Porsche the car company used to be so if we're being Generous Sony smartphones today are like Porsche cars 20 years ago so Porsche was toiling away making expensive Enthusiast sports cars for years and they were sick They were really fun cars but also their
sales numbers were anemic and the The business itself was actually in danger So the strategy to oversimplify was just Give the people what they want crossover SUVs are starting to blow up They're taking off in sales and they're becoming the most popular best-selling vehicle so They took a bit of a risk as a sports car company and built a Porsche crossover SUV that was a Porsche Cayenne That thing went on to become their best-selling vehicle ever by a mile and propped up the whole rest of the business well enough to keep everything else afloat so they could afford to also Keep making the expensive and sports cars it was kind of sacrilegious at the time for Porsche to make an SUV but if If you ask any Porsche fan today they're all glad that the Cayenne exists because It enables them to keep making the 911s and the gt3s and everything else that They love so much so hear me out, Sony
Give the people what they want now importantly what I'm not saying is for them to stop making these super high-end Enthusiast phones but what I am saying Do they need some sort of Mass A market-appealing phone that people like I can recommend it to everyone so that they can afford to keep making phones like this so I'm thinking something in the six to eight hundred dollar range which isn't foreign to them, they can do this and it needs to Keep of course all the characters that makes a Sony phone a Sony phone not just another generic 700 phone but it really Think hard about this so here are three things I would do or would recommend for Sony to make a Sony character Mass market phone the same way that Porsche made a Porsche character mass-market vehicle so number one with the phone itself you got a smartly slightly cut down those specs so this new Sony Xperia
1 Mark 5 I've been talking about it has a 6. 5 inch 21x9 120 hertz 4K HDR OLED display it's kind of ridiculous It's one of the most technically impressive parts of any phone just like The last Sony phone and the one before that it's 643 pixels per inch It's the sharpest thing you'll see on a Mobile device Sony is the only company I See right now putting 4K displays in their smartphones and there's a reason for it the mass market phone 1080p and I know it sounds sacrilegious Because this Tony thing is always a 4-K display but they did have the Xperia 5 Mark III which is also a 1080p display and You keep all the Sony characters around the display because it's not just the 4K resolution that makes this a Sony thing but there are also one of very few to be
doing the tall 21x9 aspect ratio that makes it easier to hold and the flat panel with no curves around the edges and no hole punch and it's surrounded by large front-facing speakers because I don't mind a little bit of bezel they should keep all of that now some of you might also be thinking right now about the Xperia 10 series which is Sony's line of more budget-oriented 400-ish dollar phones those phones have 60hz 1080p displays I think this should be right in this sweet spot in the middle just do a premium mid-range 120 hertz 1080P and I'd also like to make it a bit smaller this is a six-and-a-half inch display which as I said is on the larger side and while Sony's doing what They can make it more reachable with 21 by nine it's still going to be tough for people to reach the top without some hand gymnastics mostly because the The fingerprint reader power button is here
and so if you unlock the phone while Holding it like this it's unlikely that You can also reach the top with your thumb so I'm thinking of getting it down to roughly a six-inch phone maybe a little less 1080p display with Sony character around it all that's the biggest spec to cut down the only other thing you end up missing out on if you Making a smaller phone is a slightly smaller battery but then you're going from a 5,000 milliamp-hour battery and a 4K display to a 1080p display with a 4 600 milliamp-hour battery so then the number two and this is a big one a better automatic camera now it's specifically specifically automatic cameras so what you've probably heard me talk about it in the past Do not get it twisted these are some of the absolute best cameras in any smartphone but they are because they are so manually controllable and
customizable that's why the enthusiasts Like me love these things and why so Many people in that crowd will buy them but it's just a different world being in full auto so these have a lot of parallels to shooting with like the Sony Alpha cameras and then this Xperia 1 Mark 5 has some interesting new stuff They've moved up to a 52-megapixel sensor which is not a number you see very often but that's just binning down to 12 megapixels with some extra room for stabilization and it is a 1. 7 times larger sensor than the last gen with some new optimizations surrounding the sensor Tech itself it's insane you see by decoupling the photo diode and transistor from being housed In the same space, they free up room to have a larger photodiode in the same area and that also lets them increase the size and overall
performance of the transistor in its own layer all this results in a better light sensitivity on each sensitive area and larger pixels on their substrate layers which results in massively lower noise and improved low-light sensitivity If you know how to use it what's frustrating about reviewing these Sony phones are I can say all that and the enthusiasts will appreciate it but I still can't recommend a fourteen-hundred dollar phone to the masses that still has a slightly confusing slightly subpar full auto camera mode like if you want to dig in and navigate your way around You can get incredible footage and photos out of these cameras in the more manual modes but on a Sony phone first Of all, there are three camera apps Cinema Pro Video Pro Photo Pro and even in the most basic mode of Photo Pro that launches when you just hit that Sweet dedicated shutter button it's a
little more complex than most people are used to there's just a few extra unlabeled buttons there are just a few Weird quirks like the photo modes are hidden under more but also a night mode and portrait mode is down here at the bottom it's also weird that the shutter button doesn't blink at all when you Take a photo I know it's just a tiny thing but regular people expect the viewfinder to Blink when they take a the picture because every other smartphone does and for some reason, Sony doesn't It seems unnecessary but this auto-mode It just has to be simplified even more than it already has of course right Behind the dumb-down Auto modes is a ton of another way more powerful modes all the manual modes all the Sony character is still there but for the masses I promise They just want to pull the phone out of their pocket launch the camera real quick and take a picture of their
friend or their kid their pet doing something silly there's something happened right in front of them they just want to take a quick snap and they want that to be the best picture possible just that Quick Auto One Shot boom and I even get a little bit bummed out by the quality of shots from Sony's straight auto mode because I know all The technology that goes into these cameras also Sony makes all these sensors so they should have the best vertical integration pipeline in the world but they still get blown out the Water by a pixel or a Samsung phone in these basic point-and-shoot situation Sony tends to overexpose a little bit they don't do HDR scenes as well as the others they were consistently near dead last in the blind smartphone camera test that I ran last year where you all voted on the best looking at pictures without knowing which
The camera took which photo so Sony's full-blown auto mode despite having all This awesome Tech can still be pretty rough and fixing that would make a massive difference in making it for the masses so then number three last but not least Treat it like a flagship Sony it would be great if you could copy the other's homework a little bit on this one here I'm not even going to get into the naming of the phones but you have to put out the phone a week maybe two weeks Max After you announce it like that I don't know how else to say it like I know There's a lot that goes into launching a phone and of course getting it into carrier stores in certain markets and international markets and getting everything to work but you I think you need to do as much as possible behind the scenes so that when you reveal the phone as soon as that hype
wave starts to Crest people can buy it One to two weeks later tops now Sony Believe it or not is making some progress on this it used to be six months of a gap between announcing the phone and it going on sale can you Imagine that it's like a phone gets announced in April And you can't buy it until like October it's absurd but then they got it down to five, they got it down to four This phone was announced on May 11th but B H has it estimated for July 28 that would be still almost three months after the initial unveiling which is better than it used to be but that's still Trust me that's enough time for people to forget about it and find something else to do with their 1400 bucks so Sony's got to get this window down to be much much shorter so to summarize There's nothing wrong with Sony making these incredibly high-end
impressive Enthusiast phones just like There's nothing wrong with Porsche making their awesome high-end Enthusiast sports cars but Porsha needed that Cayenne to survive and I think Sony is going to need some type of Mass Appeal obvious for the masses type phone that still has the character of all the stuff That makes a Sony phone special I think It'll be a bit smaller version of this I don't think it gets a 4K screen I think It's 1080p it's a much better Auto camera mode because that's what most People just want a phone it's got to come out a day to two weeks after it's announced and maybe changed the name but Still, keep the design of the headphone jack The SIM card tray and micro SD card slot that both pop out without needing any ejector tool yet somehow keep ip68 water Resistance keeps the taller and more reachable aspect ratio and the square sides and the fast
fingerprint reader that's combined with the power button and the dedicated The shutter button keeps the flat screen with no hole punch cut out The stereo front-facing speaker pairs all That would be so killer with some fast Android updates until then these will continue to be some of the most underrated phones on the planet but while the rest of the planet even though they exist.