Sony was once a steady player in the smartphone world but it lost its somewhere and could never really get back up. Look closely, however, and you’ll see some fairly competent devices with some neat tricks up its sleeve to differentiate itself much better than most other smartphones. The Sony Xperia PRO tells a similar story but this time around Sony has pulled out all the stops to distinguish it from the Sony Xperia 1 II.
Sony Xperia PRO: The Real OG of ‘Pro’ World
The Sony Xperia 1 II was a brilliant smartphone which ran on competent hardware, a beautiful and elegant design and some interesting decisions that lent it an array of enthusiastic features that zinged up the entire package. Sony Xperia PRO takes that up to the drawing board and chips in some serious ‘Pro’ upgrades. But is it worth the $2,499 (~Rs. 1.83 lakhs) price tag?
Sony Xperia PRO is squarely aimed at a photographers, videographers and other content creators and solely intends to become a secondary display unit with high speed 5G connectivity and a decent battery life built-in. On the course to achieve such a niche usability it picks up some interesting features:
- Micro-HDMI Port: No alternatives to live ports! The entire industry is trying to ditch the ports but Sony went the opposite direction and added a Micro-HDMI port. You can connect via a cable to a camera or a camcorder and use the 4K OLED display on the Sony Xperia PRO as a viewfinder. Another good thing — it retains the 3.5mm headphone jack!
- 360 Degree Antenna Design: Connectivity is the key. Professional users require high speed and Sony Xperia PRO promises that by using a surround antennae technology that embeds the antennas all throughout the body without the constraints of having a metal body. The Sony Xperia PRO supports both 5G mm-Wave & Sub-6 alongside Bluetooth 5.1, WiFi 6 and NFC.
- Display: The Sony Xperia PRO makes use of 6.5″ 21:9 CinemaWide 4K HDR OLED display. The display measures 1,644×3,840 pixels and offers 100% coverage of DCI-P3 100 colour gamut. While the screen itself proved to be great, the tallish layout sometimes doesn’t play well with applications designed to work with more mainstream ratios. The elongated display, however, means the device is like candy bar phones of old and very usable and alternatively also provides beautiful cinema experience while playing movies shot for the theatre widescreen.
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Sony also has a wonderful habit of putting in its best sensors with neutral software processing producing images that are true to life rather than being colour boosted or sharpened unnecessarily to look more appealing. On the Sony Xperia PRO sits a triple camera set up on the rear. A 12MP Exmor RS mobile sensor with an f/1.7 lens does the primary duty. Accompanying the primary sensor resides two 12MP sensors with an f/2.4 lens and an f/2.2 lens with a 124-degree field-of-view. For selfie duty, Sony Xperia PRO uses an 8MP shooter at the front, with an f/2.0 lens.
Sony Xperia PRO runs of 2020 flagship processor from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 865. While it is an amazing processor in itself, times have moved ahead with SD 870 taking it over from the SD 865 and being one-upped by the SD 880. The Xperia PRO uses 12GB of RAM coupled with 512GB of onboard storage and upgradeable storage of up to 1TB via a micro-SD card. Sony also has plonked in a 4000 mAh battery which supports Xperia Adaptive Charging and USB Power Delivery (PD) fast charging.
While the Sony Xperia PRO features an amazing set of hardware and software tech especially for audio-visual enthusiasts, it remains to be seen how devices Sony manages to put into the hands of actual customers. With the global pandemic rocking the market to its core, $2,499 price tag doesn’t particularly grab too many wallets. Amazon, B&H Photo Video, and the Sony online store will be selling the Sony Xperia PRO in the US market for now. The global launch still unclear.