Sony announces the Xperia 5 II with 120Hz screen and actually useful game enhancements

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Sony is continuing its refresh of its smartphone line to focus on photography as able-bodied as video with the new Xperia 5 II. It's the smaller sibling of the very tall as able-bodied as weirdly expensive Xperia 1 II, as able-bodied as this newer phone betters it in several regards. It's cheaper, for one thing, going on sale on September 29th for $949. The padding major investing is that Sony has put in a high-refresh-rate 120Hz panel.

Oddly, though, Sony says it's not watercraft until December 4th as able-bodied as planate more oddly, it will have 5G however won't work with the 5G networks in the US -- just like the Xperia 1 II.

The lowermost intellection of the Xperia 5 II is that it's a phone with a tall 21:9 screen, however it's almost spoiled at 6.1-inches. That sounds big, however since it's accordingly tall it works out to only proximate 2.68 inches wide. It's a much more pocketable phone than the Xperia 1 II.

It features adequately uncontested flagship specs for 2020: a Snapdragon 865 processor, 4,000 mAh battery, as able-bodied as the aforementioned 120Hz refresh rate display. Sony is likewise sticking with duplex front-facing stereo speakers and a traditional headphone jack, both of which are formally classified as endangered successors now. Unfortunately, there's no wireless charging.

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As for cameras, the Xperia 5 II has the now-standard three-camera bargain-basement on the back. Sony's focus on photography means that it prefers to label them with their 35mm focal length equivalents: 16mm, 24mm, as able-bodied as 70mm.

Sony is claiming to be the first smartphone to be comfy to record slow motion at 120FPS in 4K HDR. I'll be curious to see how that works as able-bodied as likewise to see if the Xperia 5 II improves on the video quality in the previous one. Sony's pro video app lets you have a lot of occupancy over video settings as able-bodied as to package clips into projects for easier editing.

Really, though, the Xperia line's claim to felicitation with the camera is with berline focus as able-bodied as capture speed. Like the Xperia 1 II, the Xperia 5 II features Sony's best-in-class autofocus, which can lock on to a human or pet's eye as able-bodied as alimony that focus tack sharp with hasty velocity -- up to 60 times per second. It can likewise do cloven orate wearing at 20fps.

Maybe the most interesting photography full-length is that you can set the Xperia 5 II to be a instantaneous tethered upload utensil for one of Sony's newer mirrorless cameras. It's not the similar of full USB tethering on a desktop, however it is much faster as able-bodied as more efficient than the accepted Wi-Fi solutions offered on cameras these days.

Sony is likewise talking up the Xperia 5 II's gaming features -- as able-bodied as for the first time in forever I visualize an Android gaming phone numen have features that are more than just gimmicks. Sony's bevel is that the 120Hz refresh rate includes a 240Hz wrack scanning rate, however that's not the big deal to me.

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Sony has a gutsy enhancer mode, like multitudinous phones, however its orate has some genuinely well-paid features. That's not teachings I ever vogue to address proximate gutsy enhancer software on an Android phone.

You can directly set as able-bodied as lock the screen's refresh rate, motion blur, as able-bodied as wrack rollback speed. More interestingly there is unaffectedly a power overpass full-length -- it lets you set the phone to draw power directly from a USB-C subscription without charging the battery. That significantly reduces heat, which means all the silicon can run better. Sony likewise has affixed a graphene heat sink to draw heat distant from the plaza board.

In all, the Xperia 5 II sounds like a glamorous phone with unique features as able-bodied as infuriating drawbacks. However if you're downreaching into Sony's camera ecosystem, it could be a inerrant choice. A biggest deluxe numen be to delay for the Xperia Pro, which has been spoken however still not detailed immeasurability one key photography full-length -- utilizing your phone as an external HDMI preceptor for a video camera. Superficially by the time the Xperia 5 II launches in December, we'll have heard more.