Sony's New Ultra Flagship Smartphone...

Yo guys, I got my rig. I call it Megalodon

Today we've got one of the more unusual Smartphones there's nothing flashy about this phone. It feels durable out the box

I don't think anybody's even gonna think about putting a case on it in recent memory this year any year

Yeah, you could send a ps5 signal into whoa I've looked at Sony smartphones in the past and I've been pleasantly surprised

They've had they've put an emphasis on Photography on camera features video features sort of pulled from their camera expertise put it into their phones complex

Complicated I'm glad that it exists so and I'm glad that Sony's taking a different approach only because we have so many great options already at just the kind of

flagship premium thing, glass and polish and fingerprints and fancy and luxury

So I've had a positive experience with the previous generation, Xperia 1, Xperia 5

but today they took things to a completely different level, but it's a complicated conversation

All right, you have this smartphone. Do I need a new smartphone? The smartphone's $2,500

They launched a somewhat controversial product. I mean, it's hard to call it controversial because it's like, what are we..

What's the controversy? We're talking about the price of the device and what it does and who it's for. It's the Xperia Pro

All right, and they put Pro in the name because it's intended for pros. Unlike everybody else who puts the Pro there because it just sounds good

It's more like a prosumer type. Sony actually expects for professionals to use this setup

Not just the phone, but the phone with the camera attachment. They want to get that dude from the NFL

They want to be inside of a variety of productions via smartphone for easier streaming and for easier sharing of files more quickly by integrating the smartphone into the production environment

Now, for a lot of you, you're just saying, well, I just see a premium price tag, Lou

A lot of you are saying, is that a $2,500 smartphone, Lou

Does that have a Snapdragon 865 in it, Lou? And that's a whole different area of the market

And for those people, you need to recognize that this isn't necessarily targeted at you

It's still gonna perform, it's still gonna be nice. Even as a phone without the camera being attached to it

it's still got some very unique features inside of the camera application and video application

Totally professional stuff, and it has a rugged body. Why don't we just, maybe I should just unbox the thing

Okay, actually real quick, let's just look at the website. All right, $24.99, making it one of the most expensive

Smartphones I've ever featured here on the show. This is the key feature HDMI connectivity

This is what allows you to use this as a monitor for well

It doesn't even have to be a Sony camera. There's gonna be some advanced functionality there

But as an external monitor places like this YouTube channels and such we use these these things

These things are used here not often seen in the light of day by you on the other end of the lens

but back behind it, I've been using these for years. HDMI connectivity into the phone

it can do some of what that thing previously did. And those are expensive too

Those are like 2Gs too. Also got 5G millimeter wave in here

And that's another ambition. This is gonna be key for wirelessly transmitting

a high quality, high resolution video. Low dielectric constant material optimizes signal strength

My goodness. 6.5 inch 21 by 9 cinema wide so this was another thing i noticed in the previous model you have

this really slender design but still a big display so it's a little bit taller now you can't find all

that much content that's going to fit in there perfectly that you didn't shoot yourself but you

get a one-handed functionality a comfort when holding it with one hand that you don't get out

out of obviously wider form factor devices. Snapdragon 865 I mentioned previously

it is water resistant IP6568 and it has a 4,000 milliamp hour battery

So those are your key specifications. But if you look at this whole package right here

and we actually have all this stuff, prepare yourself for a comprehensive video

We have many of the Sony things. This is the hot new A1 camera

I'll do the rig thing for you. So I'm gonna be ultra comprehensive

but I'll show you sort of roughly what an entire package can look like

for your personal YouTube ambitions, which they may very well be there

In a professional environment, fast and easy file transfers straight from the photograph

on the field and into the smartphone prepared for sharing because of all the connectivity built in

The live broadcasting thing is quite interesting to me. Let's hop into the box

Why don't we? Also has micro SD card expansion. Okay. So here it is

Very simple unboxing experience. Almost like a professional item. This thing is a tank

Oh, I like that. I like the tank aspect to it. Kind of reminds me of some of those rugged phones of past

The texture here, like a premium camera, has a little bit of grit and grip to it

It is not slick and it does not attract fingerprints. It's there, I promise

There's a texture on there. You can see the camera module in this location

It's all embedded. So no big giant camera hump. One of the benefits of a slightly fatter phone

Look at the Pro designation right there in gold, Xperia Pro. Another unusual characteristic of not just this phone

but also the Xperia 1, you have your fingerprint scanner. It's baked into your power switch on the side of the phone

where your thumb goes. So it's a single handed kind of unlock like this

You don't have to go down to the display. And in my time I spent with the Xperia 1

the last version of it, I kind of found that to be perfectly fine and convenient

So no problem there. You also have some dedicated buttons over here

dedicated shutter button to make you feel like a real professional as you pop off that photo

instead of touching some digital indication of the shutter release like you feel like bang And this is of course just using the phone without any kind of camera attachment Something I noticed over here on the side as well

is that one of the buttons here is indented purposely. And then the other one next to it has a texture

So you can quickly determine the difference between the two without seeing them

You know which is which I like that. You've also got volume rocker over on this side here

And another unique thing to the Sony lineup is the fact that the SIM card trade

does not require a SIM card tool. It pops out super easily and quickly

which is not just nice for SIM cards, but it's also nice for the expandable storage

since we have micro SD on there. If you were constantly subbing out or swapping out

or transferring files from micro SD, then the need to look for a SIM tool

it would be a little bit frustrating. In this case, it's just your fingernail and it pops out

and you still have the IP rating on there, which is nice. Now the magical port is down here on the bottom

this HDMI port, which is what's different about it. It's an HDMI input, not output

So this is a display. You can send an HDMI signal into your phone

to use it as a screen. Obviously the application of sending a camera

to use this as a monitor is what they are advertising, But could you not send, I mean, you could send anything there

Could you not? Yeah, you could send a PS5 signal into, whoa

I'm not sure why you would want to, but I presume it would be possible

You have your USB type C connector for charging it up. And there's a little cover here on the display

So this is not going to win any awards for the, you know

having the most aggressive screen to body ratio. There is a forehead and a chin on there

and the camera module front facing in that location. Also in the package, a little bit of paperwork

20 watt charge brick and the headset is included, which is a mini jack headset

But oh yes, I almost didn't notice. You still have an og audio output

So you can plug in your headset. That's kind of becoming a professional feature in 2021

You don't see it very frequently, but that could be useful for monitoring

in the professional environment content creation. USB Type-C cable is the last item over there

So that wraps up your unboxing experience. Sony doesn't do much to the skin

They keep it pretty simple, which I appreciate. You'll see it is basically unadulterated Android

which is really nice for me. I've always been a fan of the Pixel devices

Nexus devices before that. I like a clean Android experience in a lot of cases

And so Sony doesn't mess with it too much. Yeah, it's 4K HDR OLED

That's on a 6.5 inch display. So this is a crazy number of pixels

which also contributes to the price point. Now I know that you could just go get the Xperia 1

and say to yourself, wait a sec, I had the 4K display over there and it wasn't $2,500

Absolutely. But again, once it becomes a monitor and you start looking at portable 4K monitors

for your camera equipment, again, that's YouTube life I'm talking about. Then you start to see some pretty significant price tags

associated with pocketable 4K resolution for monitoring. Now on the smartphone side of it

it's just kind of nice to have 4K. I mean, you could hold it in, you know

this distance from your eyes and still have, I mean, you can't spot any pixels in there

It is some seriously tight pixel density, 6.5 inch. I don't know if it's the only 4K display

but it's one of the only ones that's popped up over here. It does mean however

you don't get the exotic refresh rate on there. So you're still, you got a 60 Hertz display

Oh, you know what? It has a lot of RAM, 12 gigabytes of RAM

I think that's an upgrade 512 gigs of internal storage. So I suppose that's where they're getting

their pro aspect as well, as far as the spec sheet is concerned. And because you have that micro SD card slot

that opens you up to another terabyte of storage potentially as well. Now, if you look at your homepage here

It's all about content creation. You have hotspot and tethering, endurance mode

external monitor mode, transfer and tagging, imaging edge mobile. You have Photo Pro and Cinema Pro

These are separate to the default Android camera applications which are still there if you wanna take a quick photo

This is basically the Android style camera app, but really the magic here happens

when you launch into Photo Pro or the Video Pro mode. And it's like, I mean, it's a whole manual dream here

for anyone who wants to dive deeper into the photography realm and access features

that were previously only accessible to dedicated cameras now come to life on the smartphone

in the form of the Xperia Pro. Like look at this thing, look at this layout

with your exposure over here. I mean, you like autofocus, continuous autofocus

There's the eye tracking autofocus that Sony is so famous for on all the cameras

that every single YouTuber uses. It's in here, it's in the phone

And so whether you wanna just use the device itself as the capture device

as opposed to a dedicated camera working in conjunction with the thing

it still packs a lot of the stuff you're looking for in a more professional grade camera

into a smartphone form factor. If I log out of here and go into the Cinema Pro

it's the same story and you're gonna see all kinds of exciting stuff in here

Picture profiles that are flat so you can color grade them afterwards

The super wide aspect ratio, frame rates that might give you a more sort of filmic look

if that's what you're going for, 23.98. Obviously the variety of lens options as well

from 16 mil F2.2, all the way up to 70 mil F2.4

big apertures all the way along there. And this is the cool part with the look

we're real pros on this show. If I switch between looks like that's Venice CS

So you're talking about a sort of a pro color setup where you're gonna get into your post-production

and go in there and enhance the color as you see fit. If you not in the production mindset this may be not all be all that appealing to you But if you did pick this phone up it could be a jump off point for playing around with more professional settings that as far as smartphones are concerned

usually require some extra software or something to unlock anything close to this

And you're still probably not gonna end up here. Now, if you don't wanna do post-production

or you're not looking for those exotic picture profiles, you can, of course, once again, like I said previously

just launch into the stock application and then you can see your usual saturated variety of colors there so that you can go straight to

sharing and you don't need to run any color correction or color grading on it. So in the

photo mode here, that is your standard lens, a snap of photo there. Here is your wide and it does

appear to have some lens correction in there by default. We have the wide angle, also the 70

millimeter zoom, which appears to appears to not have the greatest focusing distance, you have to be a fair. But it's I

mean, that's a very true to life representation. Wow. Look at that. It's almost bang on even in the stock camera app. So

fancy and fun stuff going on. I don't even know maybe Sony

expects that people who are in the market for a Sony camera end up picking up the phone because

They're already such a fan of the camera. They're like, you know what? I'm constantly on this thing

I want a phone that complements that and This is another thing you just don't see that frequently as a person watching content on YouTube, but if you

converse with content creators It's everybody has one of these cameras to begin with and so Sony kind of makes a play and says you know what

we're not Samsung we're not Apple we're not selling a tremendous number of smartphones but

when it comes to cameras we're kind of up here right now so they're like maybe we're a camera

first company and the smartphone is complementary to that maybe that's an angle and approach we take

and we go lower volume higher margin and position this device at $24.99 it's quite possible all right

so other items that have been included from Sony for this unboxing experience the camera is a whole

nother ridiculous story of resolutions and frame rates this thing shoots 8k we tested it to shoot

8k continuous i want to switch all the cameras to this camera like sony's angle and attack is seems

like it's focusing on me directly and people who live a lifestyle like this and i guess the market

is growing for content creators and therefore maybe uh maybe there's more potential buyers than

you would have immediately imagined. So this is a cage that you can install

on the outside of the camera. And that's gonna allow you to rig up

all kinds of accessories. It just gives you some more flexibility. And this is the actual cage portion over here

Ooh, a cable clamp. And look at this. Wow

That's cool. Tons of mounting points, a lot of flexibility, certainly a professional type of application

And last up is this monster, the A1, what did I say

Continuous 8K recording at 30 frames, 4K up to 120 internal. You know, you've heard these things

from other manufacturers are overheating. I don't know, it's a marvel. I don't know how they do it

I've been using Sony cameras for a long time. It felt like 4K was kind of where we were

But when it comes to the package they put together, with the form factor, this new resolution

and the autofocus stuff. And like I got, like this camera right over here

like look at this, that's autofocus. See what I'm saying? This is a 20 mil from Sony, but you can see

How about the card? Let's try this. Boom. it's a tough, it's a tough process to figure this out

But they, I mean, when it comes to faces, it's even better with the eye tracking and such

They're doing some magic at high resolutions, which that stuff is hard to find

The monitor on the back, I heard some people talking, saying they wish that it was a flippy flappy

like it flipped all the way around. Not such a big deal in our particular workflow over here

So I'm okay with that. What I do like obviously is the full size HDMI port over here

It's a robust connector compared to the mini one, which funny enough, that's what you use on the phone

A full size HDMI port to be locked in for a more extended period of time

It's nice to have it on there. Type-C connector to power it up. You still have og input and output for audio

What is this? Oh, we have networking. And then there's a multi-output

I guess it's a multi-AV output. Oh, look at that. It says 8K steady shot, 8K steady shot inside

Dual card slots in there as well. Now these must be expensive cards

The CFexpress A, you can insert into either slot, but you can also insert SD cards

So it's a kind of multi-slot itself. Although in order to enable those high resolutions

I guess you're going to need this card to have enough throughput. This stuff is crazy fast, obviously

This wheel right here is different. The wheel around the wheel. This is a selector for the auto focus mode

AF-S, AFC, DMF, and then manual focus. They kind of went wild on the EVF as well

This is some crazy resolution too. Is this turning into a camera video? 8Ks

So many Ks. All right, let's quickly finish off the unboxing. Camera unboxings are very comprehensive

So also inside the package you have your charger. This is going to charge your battery. This is not a battery

This is a CFexpress A Slash SD card reader and it is robust. I

Love this thing. Oh my god. I want this on my desk USB type-C and it's cold metal

There also a type cable to connect that a blue bag for a a C to C so there a C to A and a C to C power cable for the battery

charger also in the package you're going to have your battery it is an NPF Z100 if you have Sony

products already Sony cameras you may own some of these why don't I put together a rig right now

Wow, that thread feels so satisfying. Wow. This is how I wear my hat when I'm rigging

Whenever I'm rigging. Yo guys, I got my rig. I call it Megalodon

What lens should I put on here? Enough light. Damn

oh woof

two times magnifier wow I mean it's a cool rig she's a cool rig

my goodness it is a nice monitor it is, I've got a macro lens on there right now

and there's just no way I could simulate this exact experience on the tiny little display

especially when you add smartphone-like responsiveness for zooming. Like, I mean, you got the pinch and everything else

Now, I know that you have a kind of strange aspect ratio on here

You get these black bars on the side. Now, if you tap, it gives you some specifics like your battery life

and what you're shooting in on the camera. and of course some different settings over here

For me, where it really comes to life is when you tap in on it

and kind of focus it on a specific area. Like, look at this macro lens

And then having a 4K resolution with a tight pixel density, it's a magical experience

I can light up just like focus on one line of keys on that particular keyboard

So it's a capable monitor, but it's a complicated conversation. All right, you have this smartphone

Do I need a new smartphone? Smartphones $2,500 this camera the a1 again

You don't need to have this whole package you have a capable smartphone

But if you wanted this you're like ten thousand dollars or whatever it is you're shooting 8k

It's in one hand I'm happy, but that's kind of what I do. That's kind of my interest for other people

They might sit be saying hey if I'm gonna spend $2,500 on a smartphone

I sure want that smartphone to be my main camera device. That's a lot of people in the world

that they're not gonna be picking up one of these things. So it's a complicated device

but that's kind of why I like it too is because it can do all these different things

and you kind of get to decide how you wanna use it. You can plug it in

It is really, it's almost like a YouTuber phone specifically for somebody who does these types of setups

and could utilize this. but it's not without its drawbacks. If this is my phone, what about the notifications? What am I

going to respond to a text while mounted to the phone? And what if I quickly need to have a private

phone call on there? It's like, I'm all of a sudden, I know it's not the hugest deal in the

world, but it's like, do I want my professional video equipment to be tied into my personal life

in the way that a phone happens to be? But if I push this to the side, I'm just like, you know

I kind of like a rugged Utilitarian phone I'm like you know

I kind of like some of the things Sony's doing Giving me 4k On a screen

With this much density Oh I kind of like What they're doing Giving me the Cinema Pro features

In the video app Inside of the phone That's already there Oh I kind of like

What they're doing Giving me 12 gigs of RAM And a 512 storage

With expandable storage I just gotta use my fingernail Oh I kind of like What they do

Giving me the dedicated Button on the top So I can snap photos And feel like I got that thing

even when I don't have that thing. So as you can see, complex, complicated

I'm glad that it exists so, and I'm glad that Sony's taking a different approach

only because we have so many great options already at just the kind of flagship premium thing

and glass and polish and fingerprints and fancy and luxury. They didn't go luxury

They went pro instead. There's nothing flashy about this phone. It feels durable out the box

I don't think anybody's even going to think about putting a case on it because of how robust and tank-like it feels

That doesn't mean it's going to be for everyone. I think most people will probably pick luxury over pro

even when it has pro in the name. You look at an iPhone with the shiny everywhere, everything's shiny

and the colors, and most pro equipment doesn't do that for you

A lot of luxury equipment does do that for you, although you don't often refer to luxury items as equipment at all

now do you it's a specific device for people like me so i probably have more appreciation for it

than you do and even for me it's going to be tough to justify this particular purchase because of how

specific that use case is i still might get better mileage out of a separate phone and a separate

monitor but there you have it it is the most expensive phone sony's probably ever put out

alongside the most expensive mirrorless camera they currently make. It's a magical combination if you can afford to pay the bill

But for strictly smartphone buyers who won't use that HDMI port, you're probably going to end up elsewhere

unless this styling and that 4K display is speaking to you on a very deep level

which is also possible. Thank you