Sony announced the Xperia 5 II: a 120Hz full-frequency mini phone

Today Sony is pursuing one of the newest form factors that the company introduced last year with the Xperia 5. The new Xperia 1 II (reads as Mark 2) pursues the smaller flagship device, while retaining its shape-factor, but also significantly improving its design as well as maintaining nearly complete parity with Features with the larger Xperia 1 II.

The new phone also sets out to differentiate itself from other Sony offerings: the company seems to have focused on the device’s more gaming-focused usability even though externally it does not have the flair of a gaming phone. Thanks to a new internal heat dissipation system, OLED refresh rate with a refresh rate of 120 Hz and a sample rate of 240 Hz touch, the Xperia 5 II punches its weight when it comes to fluidity.

Sony does it all while preserving the form factor and weight of the Xperia 5 – even in a new 4000mAh battery thanks only to improved internal engineering. This is Sony’s bundle that has been looking the most competitive in years, let’s dive into the details:

At the heart of the phone is the Snapdragon 865 SoC that allows the device to have excellent performance. Although the SoC is quite conservative in terms of its power draw, the Xperia 1 II has some very slight bottlenecks under constant workloads like games. To alleviate this, Sony developed an improved heat dissipation system inside the phone, thanks mostly to a new large graphite panel capable of transferring heat from the SoC to the larger area of ​​the screen panel. This device should help achieve nearly indefinite sustainable performance under normal conditions.

In terms of memory, we still see 8 GB DRAM and 128 and 256 GB of storage, expandable with microSD cards.

In terms of design, the Xperia 5 II takes queues from the Xperia 1 II as it features an almost identical design on the front and back. Up front, this means there are still two top and bottom frames rather than modern notches or perforated cameras, but that comes in favor of having two surprisingly good speakers and what Sony claims is much better than its front stereo speakers. We see it in other competing smartphones.

One of the changes in the phone’s ergonomics is the fact that the Xperia 5 II comes with a round side frame design instead of a rectangular design and a box more than 1 II – and in this sense the phone looks more similar to the Xperia 1, and frankly this is a positive thing as I think it gives a feel and environment Much better work than 1 II.

This is still a fairly small phone by today’s standards (and today’s standards are the big phones!). At 68mm wide, it is narrower than the smallest Galaxy S20, and still weighs just 163g. Sony has managed to increase the battery capacity of the original Xperia 5 from 3110mAh to a new 4000mAh unit at the same time by re-engineering the phone’s internal components, reorienting the motherboard, and using a multi-stack design. The battery compartment also uses more space inside the phone and increases the used area in the frame.

The Xperia 5 II display is brand new for Sony. It’s an OLED screen with a resolution of 2540 x 1080, but this time it offers a refresh rate of 120Hz, and it also boasts a 240Hz touch input sample rate. This is a big leap from not only the Xperia 5, but also the Xperia 1 II of this year. I’ve never been a fan of Sony choosing to chase 4K displays in their Xperia 1 lineup, as it’s honestly a total overstatement of a huge cost on battery life. The 120Hz refresh rate at FHD + as on the Xperia 5 II is a much better option for the user experience, and the loss of resolution shouldn’t be that bad on this 6.1-inch screen since it’s much smaller than usual today, so PPI is still quite high. Reasonable.

The rear camera design is very similar to that of the Xperia 1 II. In fact, it’s basically an identical camera setup in terms of units:

The 24mm main parabolic unit works with a 12MP 1 / 1.76in sensor with 1.8μm pixels and an f / 1.7 optics system with OIS as an excellent primary camera. This is enhanced by a 12MP 12MP equivalent 70mm f / 2.4 optical zoom unit with OIS acting as a telephoto camera, and also a 16mm equivalent 12MP 1.4μm f / 2.2 optical zoom unit as an ultra wide angle unit.

The only thing missing about the Xperia 5 II its older sister is the time-of-flight depth sensor – not a big loss for photography.

Sony’s camera experience was never a hardware experience, it was its approach to software. The company has a more non-invasive approach to dealing with images, such as a digital camera or mirrorless systems – which doesn’t always work out in the smartphone space because you need more computational photography to counter the negatives than having a smaller camera sensor on a phone. In that respect, while the Xperia 5 II looks great on paper, don’t expect a great everyday experience like an iPhone or Galaxy.

The phone is only 8.0mm thick, and it’s still very usable due to its narrow width.

Sony this year brought back the 3.5mm headphone jack, and on the Xperia 5 II they also claim to have improved audio quality by improving cross talk and the path of the audio signal. It’s great to see companies admit that removing this port was a mistake and rolling back their previous options – it really gives the Xperia 5 II a completely different edge from the competition, as no one else has that potential.

With IP68 water resistance, the Xperia 5 II appears to tick almost every feature for what you want in a phone in 2020, which is very unusual and very unexpected from Sony.

As an all-in-one package, the phone looks incredibly competitive, and I’ve never been able to say that from a Sony phone for ages, if ever.

The only real caveat of the device is its price: at $ 949 or € 899, the price is still a bit high compared to the other flagships in 2020, especially in the late-generation cycle. In Europe, the Xperia 5 II will be available in October, while the US will be delayed again with availability starting from December 4 only.^{The tenth} It’s too late and at this point you’d be better off waiting for the Spring 2021 update than the competition.

However, it’s been a while and I’ve been excited about Sony in this way, which is a definite positive for the company’s new mobile path.

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