Sony may be one of the smaller players in the mobile phone market these days, but there is no doubt that they do make really good phones. Their latest and greatest phone, the Sony Xperia 5 has just hit the market and here is everything that you need to know about it.

Design

The first thing you will notice about the phone is what seems to be a slightly unusual shape. It seems to be longer than most phones and that is because it has been designed around a 21:9 aspect ratio screen. This, Sony assures us, is the best aspect ratio for viewing movies in and hence the phone is designed around that. The narrower body does make it easier to hold and fit in the hand so there might well be something to this design. To the rear of the phone is a stylish glass panel back and this shows off the Sony influence. It is available in 4 colours, Red, Blue, Grey/White and Black, but the deep red is a thing of beauty and makes the phone scream elegance.

Camera First

Sony has made many changes to the camera to improve its performance. You now get a triple-lens affair. All three lenses are 12MP. There is an f/1.6 wide lens, an f/2.4 ultra-wide lens and an f/2.4 telephoto lens. The phone also has a few software tricks up its sleeve, and these are things such as an eye-tracking mode when taking photos. This works well and keeps your subject in focus as they move around, so a great one for taking action shots. There are a wealth of options for those who are into their photography and want to be able to control all of the different aspects of their photo, which is no doubt good for the specialist, but the point and shoot still works great for the rest of us.

Other Details

The phone features the SnapDragon 855 chipset which means that it has plenty of performance and this is paired with 6Gb of RAM, so you can run apps aplenty. Internal storage starts at 128Gb though this is expandable through the use of the MicroSD slot. In terms of the operating system, it is currently only running Android 9 (pie) and this is likely because the new Android OS hasn’t quite yet been launched whereas the Sony is out now. Though we would anticipate that it will be upgraded to Android Q in short order.

Overall

The phone is a great little compact phone from Sony. It doesn’t try to compete with the big boys like Samsung and Apple, which is good as it means it is more affordable. It remains to be seen whether it will be as competitive as some of the other smaller brands though. Sony is pushing for the entertainment on the go angle with this phone. If you use your phone mainly for films and television on the go, then you would be hard-pressed to find a better or more stylish phone.