Today marks another milestone in the technology industry as the Japanese multinational conglomerate company, Sony’s Xperia, accomplished the biggest launch event in Tokyo tagged: Xperia Announcement May 2022.
The event begins at about 09:00 CEST featuring the unveiling of the next generation of the Xperia family – the Xperia 1 IV, the successor to the Sony Xperia 1 III.
The Sony Xperia 1 III is still a formidable smartphone that brought a lot of firsts to the market. As a result, it’s no surprise that the new Sony Xperia 1 IV is one of the most iterative additions to the Xperia 1 series to date.
The main improvements are the switch to the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, a battery capacity increase from 4500mAh to 5000mAh, a larger 12MP selfie camera, improved ‘Full Stage’ stereo speakers, and a 6.5in 120Hz 21:9 ‘CinemaWide’ 4K HDR OLED display that is reportedly 50% brighter than last year’s Mk III.
Specifications and Pricing
The Japanese smartphone giant hasn’t changed up the design for its flagship Xperia smartphones too much in the last couple of years and that remains the case for the Xperia 1 IV. However, flat corners, bezels at the top and bottom of the display, and a clean, pill-shaped vertical camera housing on the back distinguish the Xperia 1 IV from its competition.
The Xperia 1 IV retains the actual fingerprint sensor embedded in the power button, as well as a dedicated camera button. Although the 3.5mm headphone jack is present, there is no Google Assistant button this time around.
The new Sony smartphone comes with a 6.5inch 4K OLED display, and a 21:9 aspect ratio again, like previous versions of the Xperia 1 offer. Aside from the OLED display, the device also featured a 120Hz refresh rate and support for HDR.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor powers the Sony Xperia 1 IV, which makes sense. Sony has traditionally supported Qualcomm, utilizing its flagship chipsets in its handsets, so the SD 8 Gen 1 in the Xperia 1 IV is a natural evolution.
In terms of storage capacity, the new device comes in 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage as the base model, with microSD support for storage expansion up to 1TB. As an improvement in the Xperia family, the Xperia 1 IV supports a 5000mAh battery capacity and offers 30W fast charging, like the Xperia 1 III, and it supports wireless charging too.
The Xperia 1 IV comes with full-stage stereo speakers and supports Sony’s 360 Reality Audio, DSEE Ultimate, 360 Reality Audio Upmix, and Music Pro, which is geared for musicians who want to record songs.
The smartphone features a triple-back camera system with a ToF sensor, and it is the first smartphone to enable “real optical zoom.”
The back camera system consists of three 12-megapixel sensors, one of which is an Optical Zoom lens that provides optical zoom between 85mm and 125mm equivalent from a single module. As with interchangeable cameras, this means the lens moves to achieve the zoom.
A 24mm lens with optical image stabilization (OIS) and autofocus (AF) and a 16mm lens with AF are the other two lenses. All three lenses can capture 4K slow motion at 120 frames per second and include capabilities such as Real-time Eye AF, Real-time eye tracking, and 20 frames per second AF/AE burst with HDR.
Accordingly, the new Sony Xperia 1 IV pre-order sales have begun for a starting price of $1599/123500inr/5875aed and come in three colors Black, White, and Purple.
