Finally a REAL PRO Smartphone!!! - Sony Xperia Pro-I
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,566 words · ~12 min read
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- Guys that is so awesome. Oh man, I love this thing.
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Guys, I am so excited because what I have in front of me
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is what I hope to be the future of all smartphones going forward.
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In front of me is the Xperia Pro-I. And for those of you who have been paying attention
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Lan listed as ShortCircuit on the Xperia 1 Mark III
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about three or four months ago. And that phone is really similar to this one
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with one key distinction,
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the pro I name. And why is it called the pro I?
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Well the I stands for imaging, which is why I'm here about to unbox this
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because this phone is Sony's first phone
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and one of the first phones in the world, with a one-inch sensor.
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Yes. This phone behind this camera bump,
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is a one inch sensor. I,
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I can't even describe to you when I first read the article rumoring this phone,
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saying that they had put a one-inch sensor and from the RX100 Mark VII no less,
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the same sensor in the RX100 Mark VII, is in this phone.
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In a phone! So you might be asking, what is the one-inch sensor?
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Brandon I have no idea what you're talking about. Why does this matter?
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Well, if you've ever watched a camera video, but even if you haven't,
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you'll probably understand that a larger sensor in a camera is generally better,
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better low light, better dynamic range. There's lots of reasons that in terms of performance,
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that it is better. So the fact that they took a one-inch sensor,
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which is much larger than the typical smartphone sensor and put it into a phone that is also like,
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as thin as a flagship smartphone would be.
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Guys this is a really big deal because nothing like this has really exist.
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Even the iPhone doesn't have a one inch sensor. Okay but before I get ahead of myself,
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let's look at the phone physically on the front, we've got a 6.5 inch old LED display.
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Love to see that. On the right we've got a volume rocker power button,
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which doubles as the fingerprint sensor and two shortcut buttons,
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one for the videography pro app,
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which has this fancy animation when it launches.
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And then the camera, if you look really closely,
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the Shutter button on the camera is actually knurled kind of like
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a Shutter button on other cameras just to give you that like tactile.
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Okay this is my Shutter button for my camera feel, also it makes it easy to know that
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that's the shortcut button that you're going to press for your camera. So you just have to hold it.
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Camera opens really quickly, and you're ready to go. On the left of the phone,
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we've got a tool-less SIM and micro SD card slot.
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So you can run a micro SD expansion or dual SIM.
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Love to see that. And then there's a little islet for a like wrist strap
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if you want to have that extra like security, just kind of like a pocket camera would be honestly.
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And the device itself feels very,
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very nice. Almost forgot on the top. We have a headphone jack love to see that
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because it is now becoming a feature.
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And then on the back of course, we got our three cameras, the 50 millimeter (telephoto),
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which on our pre-production sample is unfortunately disabled,
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but that's okay. We've got two other cameras to try the 24 mil with
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a one-inch sensor and then a 16 millimeter wide.
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So that's three cameras on a phone that has a
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one-inch sensor. And it's still again the size,
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the camera bumps not even that bad, like it's really not that,
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I have an iPhone here. And I'd say, let me take this case off.
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I'd say the bump on the iPhone might even be slightly more.
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And then I also actually have a Pixel Six Pro here,
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the bump on the Pixel Six Pro.
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The bump on the Pixel Six Pro is a quite a bit more
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significant, a couple more things about the camera on this phone is the aperture is actually mechanical.
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So you can go from F two to F four,
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there's a little like thin aperture blade thing in this
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camera. And it can actually change from one to the other,
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which is again in this form factor
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really cool because that gives you more control over your
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depth of field, which is typically something you can't really do on a smartphone or I'll say do it kind of with,
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you know, computational photography. So Sony has made a couple of apps on here specifically
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for video and photo because this thing can also do 4k One 20 FPS,
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just like something bigger like the a,
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oh wait, this can't even do 4k One 20 FPS. One of their new apps is the videography pro,
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which is supposed to be, cause they also released the cinema pro on the other Xperia's that they've launched.
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But apparently they tried to simplify the process
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and make it a little bit easier to use for different users.
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And so let's take a look at the video pro app, but first we got to thank our sponsor Altium.
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Thanks to Altium for sponsoring today's video. Altium designer enables engineers to connect with every
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facet of the electronics design process. It's intuitive you can interact in a 3D environment
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and it features interactive routing. They've even got Altium 365,
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which allows multiple people to work on the same project at once. Get a free trial of Altium designer viewer
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for a limited time at the link below. When the device temperature becomes high,
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the following icon will be displayed. Do not hold the device directly in your hand while this icon
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is displayed, doing so may result in burns.
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Oh, I mean again, I guess that's understandable.
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It's a one inch sensor on a very thin phone
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cooling will probably be an issue, it's not active cooling as far as I know.
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So yeah, this thing's going to get hot and that's that. We'll see how this goes.
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Let's see, we've got manual focus and auto focus. Whoa, So manual,
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Whoa.
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That's so cool. And then if you want to do wide,
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can you change the lens in this mode? Oh my, they might be locked on the 24.
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Oh, you can do tele or you can like zoom in
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kind of like on a broadcast camera. It's got like that power zoom.
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Well no, I think this is digital zoom from Luxembourg.
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And then if you do auto off, you can just change your Shutter speed.
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Like a normal camera, Andy.
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Look at this.
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And it's, it's a pretty easy simple view. You've got a giant record button here and then you just go,
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let me see if this videography pro button works. Oh that's so that still brings us to the mode.
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So you have to hit the record button on the display okay. They probably intend you to use their grip
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because Sony actually is going to sell a vlogging kit
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to go along with this phone. And it actually comes with a front facing monitor that you
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can connect to the, to the phone and a microphone on the top.
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And then it uses their Bluetooth tripod handle thing
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that I've shown in the past. And honestly, the vlogging kit.
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Here's some images of it. Like it looks pretty cool.
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Jono just asked me how much this phone costs, because I've been nerding out about how awesome it is
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and all these features. Unfortunately it is not cheap.
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This phone goes for 1799USD.
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Guys think of the technology though. $1799,
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yes incredibly expensive. But you get so much for that.
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You get a camera that is also a phone, but more camera than a phone to be honest.
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So in cinema pro I have ah, so I have frame rate here.
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24 FPS or One 20 audio functions not available.
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That's fine. Okay. We're going to have to properly try that One 20 in a minute
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here. You've also got different looks.
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We've got Venice Color Science,
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Bright or Pink, Warm, Strong. Whoa,
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These are drastic. They're also flat though. Oh,
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so you can use both lenses in the cinema pro app nice. Okay.
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Probably want to stick to the 2,400 white balance. You can set auto or custom and then if you hit for cord,
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it just goes in on your screen and then you can change
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your focus from here. Oh, you can like rock focus mid shot.
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That's so cool. And then,
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oh, you can set. You can reset your A and B and then you can do Andy,
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this thing can do a one button focus poll for you.
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I'm pretty impressed with this app. It is very,
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very intuitive to use, especially if you've ever used a camera before,
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like any of Sony's cameras. Okay, but before we start doing test clips,
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I want to try one more thing. I want to try their photography. Full disclosure,
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I've actually been using this phone for about two days and I've tried the photography app a decent amount.
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And it is again pretty good, on the right of the display.
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You've got all these controls that you'd want on a camera.
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This is like the, the quick settings in a Sony camera,
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but on the right of your display. And then you have a couple of different modes you've got basic,
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which is just what changes that. But if you, as soon as you go to auto gives you that
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like more camera alpha series view. And then of course you've got
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program Shutter speed priority, manual and then memory recall.
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So once I go to manual I've got my Shutter speed here.
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My aperture is right here, two to four.
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See that, that's mechanical. So if you guys look really closely at this lens,
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you can see the mechanical Shutter or the mechanical aperture in action.
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There's F two, here's four, there's F two,
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here's a four. F two, F four. Guys that is so awesome.
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You can actually see it working. That is, oh man,
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I love this thing, but let's actually do some test shots.
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Let me grab a couple of things and we can try. I have a tiny scene here of these three Funko pops talking
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about how they're going to kill Lucky the dragon. Oh man,
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that actually again, I have to look at this on a computer,
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but from the Ola display on this phone this it looks really good.
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Even just this focus feature, the fact that I can rack to Lucky
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and then rack to these guys as if I was using a real camera.
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Oh man, That is awesome. And yes, of course there are phones that give you manual focus
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adjustments and you can do them on all the smartphones, but on this phone it feels so natural as if it was like a
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real camera. And then you can look at the depth of field from here
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just to my background. Lucky's not even that far away. He's just on that part of the table,
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but he's very naturally and nicely out of focus in this clip.
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So that's the videography pro recording clip. I want to try this on the cinema pro.
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Footage off of the cinema pro app is supposed to be processed in post color-wise,
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but just for comparison, I'm going to record a clip on this as well.
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You can see it's a much flatter profile.
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I just love how easy this is to rack focus.
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And it's so natural looking at least on the phone. I have to look at on another computer,
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but there's Andy back to our huddle.
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And then to Lucky, this is so easy.
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Okay. Here's just a quick and dirty test of the One 20 FPS.
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I keep getting thrown off with the Xperia, because the the Shutter button is a physical button,
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not just like a tap on the screen. Andy just asked if I could have pressing and get focused
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and yeah sure you bet I can, obviously I'm not going to be able to tell from the phone
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displays alone, but first impressions on the phone display
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the Xperia looks pretty good, but then so does the iPhone and so does the Pixel,
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I'm gonna let you guys be the judge. Here's the three photos.
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Let me know what you think in the comments down below,
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but I'm not sure yet which one I think is the best.
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Just taking a quick look at the photos that we did of Lucky. The iPhone you can see did a pretty good job
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in terms of like detail and the lens doesn't look like it has a lot of fringing,
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on the edges of Lucky here. And then on the Pixel,
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we actually see a, quite a bit more fringing on the top of his head.
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It's present on the Xperia a little bit, but really not that bad.
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Funny aside, I actually got so excited about this phone, I forgot to look at what was in the rest of the box.
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So I'm going to reopen the box. We've got a Sony 30 watt charger and a Sony type C cable.
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So I didn't miss much, honestly unfortunately, that is all the time we really have for this phone.
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If you want a deeper video, maybe comparing these three phones
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and a couple other's cameras, let me know in the comments down below,
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because I mean like, there's things we didn't even get to. We didn't even get to the fact that you can use this phone
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as a monitor. If you have something like an A74 or a Zed VE 10,
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which is super cool because it's like a 6.5 inch Olin monitor.
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And the last thing you guys might be asking is who is this phone for?
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Because it's $1799.
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Well, it's for the type of person who already has a Sony camera
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and wants a phone that is almost as good or maybe better
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in certain scenarios as there are X series,
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portable, compact travel camera. And instead of having like that separate travel camera,
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you can just have your phone and your professional camera with you at all times,
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instead of carrying two cameras for two different purposes. I got to say,
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I want one of these because it is super, super cool.
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Anyways thanks guys for watching. And please subscribe to ShortCircuit.