Sony announced the new Xperia 1 II with professional-grade triple main cameras, Snapdragon 865 and 5G

Smartphones are while they are what they are that is smart, it evolves from what seems to be a businessman’s companion for mobile computing into an adventurer tech gadget for taking photos and videos. Nowadays smartphones are often regarded as the modern point-and-shoot cameras with built-in mobile phone in them.

Sony for one, just announced a new generation of Xperia devices with the new Xperia 1 II or we could relatively say a Sony Xperia 1 Mark II which pays homage to Sony’s own Alpha 9 Full-frame Mirrorless cameras.

Given how they are relative to each other, the new Xperia 1 II comes with a new set of imaging hardware to make itself relevant in today’s standards. It includes a triple sensor system on the back of the device which are positioned vertically on the upper left of the device and even has a dedicated camera button.

Sony makes no nonsense for the Xperia 1 II and includes the company’s own three 12 Megapixel sensors on the imaging module, if you’d noticed, the resolutions are quite unchanged since the Xperia 1 but Sony upgraded these hardware with better and bigger sensor and faster lenses from which this time, now uses Zeiss lens that surprised everybody especially the Nokia community where the Zeiss branding has been seen until this time.

From here, the first camera from the top of the Xperia 1 II has a Ultra Wide lens equivalent to a 16mm Focal length with f/2.2 Aperture an 1/2.6″ sensor and features a dual-PDAF. The second camera which sits below it comes with a Telephoto lens and is equivalent to a 70mm Focal length and has a f/2.4 Aperture with OIS and PDAF.

Right below the Telephoto camera is a 3D iTOF sensor which helps for focusing and basically blurring out part of the image that’s out of focus. And the third sensor and being the primary camera among the triple camera setup has a bigger 1/1.7″ Exmor sensor equipped with OIS, a bright f/1.7 Aperture and Dual-PDAF.

Sony prints Zeiss branding on the new device and indeed, it uses Zeiss optics on the Xperia 1 II specifically the ZEISS® T* Coating which is a special non-reflective coating that is predominantly used in professional lenses. With this new feature, it is possible to take photos on the Xperia 1 II without the ghosting effect when shooting against a light source.

Other than that, the Xperia 1 II also features the Eye AF that works not just on people as subjects but even on animals as well. Sony additionally says that the new smartphone can also do 20fps burst shot with AF tracking that ensures shots on burst are in focus.

That’s the back camera, as for the front, Sony equipped the Xperia 1 II with a 8 Megapixel Selfie camera that unlike most of the new flagship devices of today, Sony has properly placed the sensor on the upper bezel of the unit.

The new smartphone comes with a 6.5-inch OLED Cinemawide Display with 4K resolutions in 21:9 Aspect ratio, it doesn’t have faster refresh rate though by Sony uses a Motion Blur Reduction technique instead. The company claims that this feature works similar to a 90Hz display by analysing what’s on screen and adjust each frame to reduce a lag.

Like all other high-end flagship devices, the Sony Xperia 1 II uses the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset and comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. It also support microSDXC cards which expands the storage with up to 1TB memory cards.

It runs Android 10 out of the box with a 4500 mAh embedded battery and uses USB Power Delivery for charging as well as wireless charging support.

The Xperia 1 II comes with stereo speakers and includes a 3.5mm audio jack, something that we missed out from last year. This is no in-display fingerprint sensor by the way but instead, the biometric sensor is mounted on the right hand side of the phone. And like most Sony devices, it comes with IP68 certification.

Available in Black and Purple, the new Xperia 1 II will be available next month with prices yet to be announced.