Having confirmed an event (opens in new tab) last week, this morning Sony has made the Xperia 5 IV official. As we were expecting, the compact smartphone brings with it new flagship features and also an £949 / $999 price tag.
Sony Xperia 5 IV: Specifications
Sleek and good-looking, available in Black, Green and Ecru White, the Xperia 5 IV is almost the same size as the Xperia 5 III (opens in new tab) (the IV is actually 1mm shorter and narrower) but 4g heavier. At the heart of the new compact smartphone is a 6.1-inch 1080p OLED with a variable120Hz refresh rate and happily, the display is 50% brighter than the panel on its predecessor.
Flagship specifications continue with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, and a bigger 5,000mAh battery with wireless charging – something which was strangely and sadly missing on last year’s model.
The Xperia 5 IV comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage and an IP65 / 68 rating, which we are starting to expect as standard. The new phone retains some disappearing hardware features in a headphone jack and a microSD card (opens in new tab) slot, which will please a lot of people. There are also new, more powerful stereo speakers.
Sony Xperia 5 IV: Camera system
The Xperia 5 IV’s triple rear camera system consists of a 24mm-equivalent standard wide, 16mm-equiv ultrawide, and a fixed 60mm-equiv telephoto. All three use a 12MP sensor – a bold move from Sony when many consumers are now fixated on smartphones featuring huge MP counts and the world's first 200MP camera phone (opens in new tab) has recently launched. Clearly an intentional move though as it’s allowed the company to get high readout speeds possible on all three cameras and to maximize low light sensitivity, thanks to the bigger pixels.
All three Xperia 5 IV rear cameras give 120 fps readout speeds, enabling video recording at 4K / 120p on each one and there’s a Videography Pro application that enables livestreaming, too. Users can also shoot still photos at 20 fps with autofocus, auto exposure, and HDR enabled. Up front, there’s a new, larger, 12MP sensor that will allow for clearer selfies and enables 4K HDR content with improved contrast.
Interestingly, the Xperia 5 IV comes with an external monitor function. When connected to a mirrorless camera, users can monitor their work on the Xperia 5 IV's 6.1" FHD display and instantly share their content using the new livestreaming function.
Sony Xperia 5 IV: Price & availability
The Xperia 5 IV will be available to buy from mid-September 2022 for approximately £949 / $999.
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