It seems that an hour can’t go by without a tech giant finding a new way to push the smartphone envelope. In what may be one of the most competitive markets in tech, every major player is pulling out all the stops to usurp Apple as the best smartphone maker. One of the biggest selling points for smartphones nowadays is the camera feature. While smartphone cameras are becoming increasingly sophisticated, Sony has raised the bar with the arrival of their latest phone, the Xperia Pro-1.
At first glance, the Sony Xperia Pro-1 is your typical sleek touchscreen smartphone. However, one look at its backside will show that the Xperia Pro-1 is anything but typical. That is because Sony outfitted the Xperia Pro-1 with the same professional-grade 1-inch camera sensor that’s found in their RX100 VII camera, which is geared toward vloggers and content creators. The Xperia Pro-1’s camera assembly has a 12-megapixel resolution, 24mm dual-aperture Zeiss Tessar lens, and is powered by Sony’s stout BIONZ X imaging processor. This processing power allows the phone to shoot up to 20 fps while using both auto-focus and auto-exposure. Even more impressive, the Xperia Pro-1 can shoot 4K video footage at 120 fps with eye-detection auto-focus. Sony also gave the Xperia Pro-1 some added durability by giving it an IPX5/IPX8 water resistance rating, a dust resistance rating of IP6X, and a Corning Gorilla Glass Victus construction for the 6.5″ 4K touchscreen display. Moreover, the Xperia Pro-1 houses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, 12 GB of ram, and 512 GB of internal memory.
With the Xperia Pro-1 release and the soon-to-be-released Alpha 7 IV mirrorless camera, it’s clear that Sony is marketing themselves toward camera and video aficionados. The Xperia Pro-1 is a solid smartphone on its own, but its camera features make it a professional-caliber hybrid camera that happens to be a smartphone. Sony is retailing the Xperia Pro-1 for $1,800, and it has a release window set for December 2021.
