I've been spending a lot of time with the Sony Xperia 1 IV recently, and it's a brilliant phone for creative pros with a particularly great camera system. But it's also really expensive: here in the UK the RRP is £1,299 (although Sony is currently offering it for £250 less). But there's a cheaper option that delivers the same Sony style and smarts, and I think it could well be the best phone for Sony fans who don't want to spend too much money.
The new phone is the Xperia 5 IV, and it's particularly gorgeous in green. But there's serious substance to match the style, especially in the camera department. All three 12MP lenses benefit from 4K 120fps slow motion, Real-time Eye AF and Real-time tracking and 4K HDR with accurate contrast grading, and the front camera is 12MP with great performance in very bright or dark lighting conditions. You can also use it as a monitor for an Alpha DSLR. The only significant omission from the flagship Xperia 1 IV is the optical zoom lens: here the telephoto lens is fixed.
The rest of the specs aren't bad either.
Sony Xperia 5 IV: key features
I really like Sony's 21:9 aspect ratio, which is as useful for reading Reddit threads as it is for framing shots or playing games. Here it's in a 6.1" FHD+ HDR 120Hz OLED that's nearly 50% brighter than in the previous model, and there's Real Time HDR Drive processing to deliver exceptional picture quality in movies. There's Dolby Atmos sound, Sony 360 Reality Audio and support for Sony's LDAC codec for high res audio. And joy of joys, there's a headphone jack so you can enjoy music and movies on the best headphones as well as the best wireless earbuds.
For gamers there's 240Hz motion blur reduction and 240Hz touch scanning for fast responses, and you can record your speed runs at up to 120fps. Inside there's a Snapdragon® 8 Gen 1 chipset and a 5,000mAh battery with adaptive charging and fast-charge delivering 50% charge from flat in 30 minutes.
So how much will this one cost? Sony says it'll be "approximately" £949 / €1,049 / $999, and it'll go on sale in the UK and Europe in late September; the US launch will be shortly afterwards in October 2022.
