Sony announced the Xperia 5 II with a 120 Hz screen and a really useful game addition

Sony continues to refresh its smartphone line to focus on photography and video with the new Xperia 5 II. It is the younger brother of the very tall and supernaturally expensive Xperia 1 II, and this new phone makes it the best in many respects. It’s cheap, for one thing, selling at 94 9,949 on September 29th. Another big improvement is that Sony has put up a high-refresh-rate 120 Hz panel.

Oddly enough, though, Sony says it doesn’t ship until December 4th and more oddly, it will have 5G but won’t work with the 5G network in the US – like the Xperia 1 II.

The original idea of ​​the Xperia 5 II is that it is a 21: 9 screen phone, but it is smaller than the 6.1-inch. It looks big, but it’s very tall, as it only works 2.68 inches. It is a more pocket phone than the Xperia 1 II.

It features the most standard flagship specs for 2020: a Snapdragon 865 processor, a 4,000 mAh battery and the above 120 Hz refresh rate display. Sony is also sticking with dual front-facing stereo speakers And The traditional headphone jack, both of which are now formally classified as endangered species. Unfortunately, there is no wireless charging.

Speaking of the camera, the back of the Xperia 5 II now has a standard three-dimensional camera array. Sony’s focus on photography means it prefers to label them with their 35mm focal length equivalents: 16mm, 24mm and 70mm.

Sony is claiming to be the first smartphone to be able to record slow speeds at 120FPS in 4K HDR. I’m excited to see how it works and also to see if the Xperia 5 II improves the quality of previous videos. Sony’s pro video app has a lot of control over you to package clips on video settings and for easy editing.

Indeed, however, the Xperia line claims to gain fame from the camera with auto toe focus and capture speed. Like the Xperia 1 II, the Xperia 5 II has Sony’s best-in-class aut tofocus, which can lock a human or pet’s eye and sharpen this focus at an astonishing speed – 60 times per second. It can also do burst mode shooting at 20fps.

Perhaps the most interesting photography feature is that you can set up the Xperia 5 II as a straight tethered upload machine for one of Sony’s new mirrorless cameras. It’s not the equivalent of full USB tethering on desktop, but it’s faster and more efficient than the usual Wi-Fi solutions provided on camera these days.

Sony is also talking about the gaming features of the Xperia 5 II – and for the first time ever I think Android gaming phones may have features that are more than just games. Sony’s angle is that a 120 Hz refresh rate includes a 240 Hz touch scanning rate, but that’s not a big deal for me.

Sony, like many phones, has game enhancement mode, but its mode has some really useful features. It’s not something I’ve ever expected to write about game-enhancing software on an Android phone.

You can directly set and lock screen refresh rate, motion blur and touch feedback speed. What’s more interesting is the power bypass feature – it lets you set up the phone to draw power directly from the USB-C cable without charging the battery. It significantly reduces heat, which means that all silicone can run better. Sony has also added a graphene heat sink to remove heat from the main board.

Overall, the Xperia 5 II looks like an interesting phone with unique features and exciting flaws. But if you’re deep into Sony’s camera ecosystem, it might be a good choice. Waiting for the Xperia Pro might be a better choice, which has been announced, but still no more detail than a key photography feature – using your phone as an external HDMI monitor for a video camera. Probably by the time the Xperia 5 II launches in December, we’ve heard more.