Sony wants to make its smartphones a little more useful for creative professionals. The company may not make the best-selling (or the best) phones out there, but it is among the best in other areas — one of those being its video and photo tech. Now, the company is finally launching the previously announced Xperia Pro — which integrates with its video equipment for a heightened professional workflow.
The device offers both hardware and software features that enable integration with Sony equipment, with perhaps the most immediately obvious feature being the HDMI input. This allows the Xperia Pro to act as a large, high-quality monitor for Sony cameras.
That’s really just the tip of the iceberg though. The real advantage comes when you combine the HDMI port with the phone’s built-in 5G support. This allows you to use a professional video camera for things like live streaming on social media and transfer footage directly to remote storage through the cloud.
To be clear, this phone is probably not for you — and it’s probably not for most creative professionals either. There’s a very niche audience of Sony video camera users who want to be able to use their camera to live-stream or automatically transfer footage while on the go, and almost no one else should buy the phone. Even though videographers regularly pay over $1,000 for a monitor that provides nothing more than a viewfinder for their camera, that doesn’t necessarily make the Xperia Pro a good deal.
Let’s be clear, this phone is for an extremely small niche of potential buyers.
Apart from the integration with Sony video cameras, the Xperia Pro has a few unique features and solid specs, but nothing to really write home about. You’ll get a Snapdragon 865 processor, coupled with 12GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 4,000mAh battery. Somewhat impressive is the inclusion of a 4K OLED display that sits in at 6.5 inches. The high-quality display does make sense though, given the fact that it’ll be used for professional video situations. On the back, you’ll get a triple-lens camera, which consists of one telephoto camera and one ultra-wide camera, along with the main 12-megapixel camera.
The integration with professional Sony equipment doesn’t come cheap, by any means. While you would expect to pay a premium for it, you probably wouldn’t expect to pay a whopping $2,500 for what is essentially a last-gen flagship Android phone with an HDMI port. Even if it is a novel idea. It’s now available from the Sony website and other participating retailers.
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