Sony renews its “compact” phone for another season with the announcement of the Xperia 5 IV. It’s a step down from the 1 IV in size, price and features, but shares the same emphasis on parity throughout its camera system. This means that the phone’s three rear cameras (standard wide, ultrawide and telephoto) feature the company’s excellent real-time eye AF for better portraits and are capable of shooting in very fast bursts up to and all with HDR enabled. It also has other flagship specs to back up its camera features, and comes with an equally flagship price tag of $999.
The Xperia 5 IV (side note: what will they call next year’s phone? The 5 V?) includes a standard 24mm wide, 16mm ultra-wide and 60mm-equivalent telephoto lens on the rear panel. That tele target is fixed, by the way; it is not the optical zoom lens of the 1 IV. Each uses a 12-megapixel sensor, a lower resolution than most 50- or even 100-megapixel flagship cameras these days. Heck, even Apple looks like it’s going to start moving away from 12 megapixels. Sony spokesman El Deane Naude says this is an intentional move to make these high readout speeds possible in all of its cameras and to maximize low light sensitivity with larger pixels.
Each of these rear cameras is capable of 120 fps readout speeds, enabling 4K / 120p video recording on each. They can also take still photos at 20 fps with autofocus, auto exposure and HDR capabilities. There’s also a new 12-megapixel sensor on the selfie camera.
Outside of photography features, the Xperia 5 IV packs a 6.1-inch 1080p OLED with a 120Hz refresh rate and tall 21:9 form factor, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, and a battery of 5,000 mAh, now with wireless charging. It comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, an IP65/68 rating, and clings to a couple of fast-disappearing hardware features: a headphone jack and a microSD card slot. There’s 5G support below 6GHz, no mmWave, and a set of new, more powerful stereo speakers on the phone. The 5 IV is scheduled to ship on October 27th.