Sony has been struggling in a saturated Android smartphone market, so decided to pivot its smartphone offerings to camera professionals. Leaning on its expertise with digital cameras, the Xperia Pro was launched at the beginning of the year for the eye-watering price of $2,500. Now, Sony is back with a new professional-grade smartphone designed for photography-focused usage, called the Sony Xperia Pro-I.
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The Japanese technology giant has included a 1-inch sensor in the Xperia Pro-I, a camera lens it uses in its RX100 VII point-and-shoot digital camera. To put this shooter into context, the primary sensor on the Pixel 6 Pro features a pixel pitch of 1.2µm whereas the Pro-I has 2.4µm-sized pixels. This means it should theoretically take immensely impressive photos in low light.
This primary sensor can also shoot 12-bit RAW files at 4K resolution and at 120 frames per second. It also includes eye-detection auto-focus. It is complimented with a 24mm lens made from glass that can switch between f/2.0 and f/4.0 apertures.
Alongside this immense sensor is a 16mm ultrawide camera and a 50mm telephoto camera. The company said that it chose this specific lens arrangement after consulting with photographers who told them they wanted a setup that matched their collection of prime lenses.
Other than the unique camera setup, the Xperia Pro-I is essentially another Android flagship smartphone. It comes with the top-of-the-line Snapdragon 888 processor, 12GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage. It also has a microSD card slot capable of expansion up to 1TB, which will be very useful when shooting those massive video files. It also has a 4,500mAh battery which is capable of charging to 50 percent in just 30 minutes with the use of the included 30W charging brick.
It has a large, 6.5-inch OLED screen that is borrowed from the Xperia 1 III. It’s a 4K display with a 120Hz refresh rate and 21:9 aspect ratio. On the audio front, the Pro-I not only comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack, but it also includes Sony’s LDAC and DSEE technologies.
