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amazon Sony Xperia 1 II reviews
Sony is known as a giant electronics company, very famous for products such as TVs, headsets, cameras, game consoles, etc. Sony has always been at the forefront of the market of technology products. They have the Bravia OLED TV that’s the best TV on the market right now. Sony headphones and speakers are no doubt about sound quality. Sony cameras are just as popular as the products listed above. Not to mention its legendary PS series.
Despite being successful in many types of technology and electronic products, Sony is losing its foothold in the smartphone market that used to be their playground. The continuous decline of Sony’s cult smartphone Xperia line is probably due to the conservative in the way. The recent Xperia products have nothing special in addition to the quality of the device that users complain about, making the Xperia series sink deeper and deeper into the mud.
Recently, Sony has released a new phone model which is the Sony Xperia 1 II. Is this a transformation of the Xperia line? See the detailed review article below to answer this question.
- Design and display
It seems that Sony wants to keep its somewhat conservative character on all Xperia lines, with the Xperia 1 II, there is no exception. The Xperia 1 II is an extremely simple, square phone with a flat-screen. Perhaps the Xperia 1 II is one of the few smartphones still keeping the square design when rival brands have switched to soft curved design on their flagship models.
Designing a phone in a flat design language also has its own quirks. You will still keep the physical volume rocker on the right side of the phone. Just above the volume up key, there will be the power button of the machine. This power button is also the fingerprint sensor of the device, many users commented that this is the most sensitive and accurate fingerprint reader on the smartphone market today.
Below the power button is a dedicated shutter button. This is a 2-step shutter button, which means you can lightly press it to focus and then press fully down to take the photo. This is a familiar operation on specialized camera models.
The top edge of the phone is equipped with a headphone jack, which was omitted from the previous Xperia XZ2.
The Sony SIM card slot allows you to open the slot with your finger instead of a SIM “stick” like on today’s phones. I really like this design, it makes it easier to swap out SIM or SD card.
The bottom edge of the phone contains a USB-C port. The back and front of the device are covered with Gorilla 6 toughened glass, the chassis is made of aluminum, giving the Xperia 1 II the rigidity.
One of the highlights of the Xperia 1 II is the 4K 21: 9 OLED display. Sony has equipped its new flagship with a 6.5-inch screen. This is not a big screen compared to other competitors’ flagships on the market. Although the screen is not too big, the unique aspect ratio feels very special. At first, maybe many people won’t be used to holding a long, narrow phone. However, after a while, we found it very useful when combined with Sony’s ability to run 2 apps on the same screen.
The Xperia 1 II has a resolution of 3,840×1,644 with a dense pixel density. On other smartphones, it is difficult to distinguish between 1090p and 1440p screens. However, with Xperia 1 II, we can easily recognize each pixel with our eyes when looking directly at the screen. This shows that the screen of the Xperia 1 II is very sharp, the icons seem to float on the screen. Everything looks great in the default screen mode. Sony also offers modes that support BT.2020 and 10-bit HDR color gamut.
A little note that the Sony Xperia 1 II uses a 60Hz screen, not 90 or 120Hz as the flagship 2020. However, this is the trade-off that Sony must make to be able to equip the phone with its 4K monitors.
Overall, Sony still retains some of the features on the Xperia 1 II: minimalistic but very unique and this makes users very impressed.
- Performance and Battery
The Xperia 1 II is a flagship Sony device right now. It is equipped with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chip with 8Gb RAM and 256GB internal memory. The device is also equipped with a microSD expansion card slot so storage problems do not need to be frightened. The device is IP68 water and dust resistant. The Xperia 1 II also comes with support for wireless charging.
During actual usage, users do not experience any performance issues or frame loss when using Xperia 1 II. Combined with the streamlined Android interface brings great performance to the Xperia 1 II. With the latest Snapdragon chip plus 8GB of RAM, the Xperia 1 II does a pretty good job on it.
Sony Xperia 1 II scored 4,248 on Geekbench 4 single-core and 13,102 points on Geekbench 4 multi-core while OnePLus 8 Pro scored 4,195 and 13,142. A close score shows that both phones operate very smoothly. You should not experience any performance issues on these 2 devices.
Another noteworthy point is that the Sony Xperia 1 II got the highest score among the phones we tested on the Speed Test G. It completed the benchmark in just one minute and 26 seconds. That is quite impressive.
The battery life of the Sony Xperia 1 II is only average in actual use, with about 6 hours onscreen. This battery life is similar to that on the LG Velvet we did a review earlier. The impressive point is that the Xperia 1 II uses a 4K screen and a 4,000 mAh battery, while LG Velvet uses a 4,300mAh battery. This shows that the performance optimization of the Xperia 11 II is very good.
where can you get a Sony Xperia 1 II online
Xperia 1 II smartphone with triple camera system, fast autofocus, Eye AF, 4K OLED display, Dolby Atmos audio technology and enhanced mobile gaming features: Buy it now
Sony Xperia 1 II 5G (XQ-AT52) Global Edition / 8GB+256GB / Dual SIM Free (Black/Black): Buy it now
Sony Xperia 1 II 5G (XQ-AT52) Global Edition / 8GB+256GB / Dual SIM Free (White): Buy it now
- Camera
The camera system on the Sony Xperia 1 II is one of the most advanced we’ve ever seen on a smartphone. It may not produce the best quality photos, but Sony is aiming for another aspect: speed.
Xperia 1 II has 3 separate cameras on the back of the device. There is a 12 MP wide-angle camera with a 1 / 2.6-inch sensor with dual autofocus. 12 MP main camera with 1 / 1.7-inch sensor, dual autofocus and optical image stabilization (OIS). 12MP telephoto camera with 1 / 3.4-inch autofocus and OIS sensors. When creating this camera system, Sony wants to aim for 2 things, one is a 3-way zoom lens of 3 cameras and 20fps shooting mode similar to Sony Alpha A9 mirrorless camera.
In fact, the triple camera has excellent zoom capabilities from wide to medium, medium to telephoto, and from telephoto to super telephoto. To do this Sony has used 16-24mm, 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses. This range makes it possible for the user to record almost every moment even the most difficult.
As mentioned above, the design of the 3 rear camera cluster helps Sony to copy the automatic shooting mode with the ability to focus 20 fps extremely fast on its A9 camera series. This is impressive because the Xperia 1 II focuses three times on a frame before it decides the focus point.
Initially, the author predicted that the Xperia 1 II will use the Sony IMX 689 sensor – this sensor is also used on the Oppo Find X2 Pro and OnePlus 8 Pro but the company has not used it. When asked, Sony share that the reason not to use the Sony IMX 689 sensor for the Xperia 1 II because they had to use a slightly lower resolution sensor to achieve 20fps and a smaller telephoto sensor so they reach 70mm lens. Sony says it wants to target the Xperia 1 II to customers who are professional photographers and who regularly shoot video.
A 24mm lens is the best lens on the camera cluster due to the large 1 / 1.7 inch sensor. The photo captures great colors, is clear in good light, and is quite good in low light. In low light cases, the camera will take a few seconds to process, but the photo will be great when done.
The telephoto lens also produces great color shots, but the image quality is slightly lower than the main camera due to the relatively small telephoto lens sensor, at 1 / 3.4 inch. use a higher ISO to compensate for the exposure. Not that the telephoto lens pictures on the Xperia 1 II are bad, on the contrary, it’s still great.
The wide-angle lens also takes great pictures. The photos are very sharp with a lot of details, even details around the edges.
Contrary to how great the rear camera is, the front camera on the Xperia 1 II is really bad. It gets blurred and noisy even in good lighting and is also bad in low light. The selfie camera of the Xperia 1 II has a resolution of only 8MP with an extremely small sensor of only 1/4 inch. Therefore, it is not surprising that it produces bad photos.
Skip the front camera, we go back to the rear camera cluster. Sony has equipped the Xperia 1 II with professional photography and video capabilities through its Photo Pro and Cinema Pro apps.
Both of these apps are built to work similarly to Sony’s dedicated digital cameras. At first, users will feel a bit confused when navigating, but once you get the hang of it, these apps will give you amazing photo control.
The Photo Pro application gives you digital zoom rings for each lens. 16mm can zoom to 24mm, 24mm can zoom to 70mm, and 70mm lens can zoom to 200m.
The Cinema Pro app is similar to the Photo Pro app, but instead of relying on Sony Alpha cameras, it’s based on the Sony FS series. It provides users with astonishing video control. Users can completely increase or decrease shutter speed, resolution or even the angle of rotation.
- Software
Sony Xperia 1 II runs on Android 10 platform and uses Google apps as default. As soon as you start your phone, you will see the Google Phone, Google Messenger, Chrome and Google Photos apps in the external interface. Sony doesn’t try to create exclusive apps because Google apps have been running smoothly and in popularity for a long time.
The Sony Xperia 1 II is also equipped with some great Sony exclusive apps like the PlayStation app. This application allows users to attach the DualShock controller directly to the device. This is good news for fans of Sony’s PS series.