Sony Xperia 5 review

Everyone the Xperia v seems to be a more compact version of the Xperia one which is Sony's top flagship at the moment now there doesn't seem to be any features missing so what are the differences between the two phones and is this the compact flagship that you should be

Getting or should you get something else I'm Angie for Jason morena and this is our review of the Xperia v the Xperia v like it's bigger brother is super skinny due to the unusually tall

Screen aspect ratio it has a 6.1 inch screen diagonal but it looks almost anorexic there are definitely some benefits to this because it's much easier to hold in most phones and one-handed use is a breeze it would be

Even better if Sony included proper navigation gestures but that might be more a flaw of a stock Android than Sony in any case the software is clean and so is the design of this phone it's elegant and minimalist and it stands out and

Stark contrast to all the crazy gradients that have come out this year the Xperia v has great build quality and with the Gorilla Glass 6 an IP 68 rated protection it doesn't feel like you have to baby it also thanks to its form

Factor it's really easy to grip on to and it doesn't feel like it'll pop out are your hands at any moments which isn't something I can say for other glass sandwich phones out there there are small bezels on the top and bottom

But once you start using the phone you don't really notice them what you do notice is the strange button placement on the side there's the volume keys a dedicated camera button the power button and a separate fingerprint reader the

Set up was already far from ideal in the Xperia One but it's worse here as the keys are too low on this phone so you have to shuffle your hand every time to turn the screen on and off speaking of which the fingerprint reader isn't the

Fastest one we've ever used you can also set up the face unlock option but you'll still have to swipe up on the screen once it's been unlocked the 21 by 9 screen aspect ratio that makes this phone so eye-catching is a controversial

Topic you can't objectively say that it's a good or bad thing because it really depends on personal preference for example I'd rather go with a more standard ratio the LG G 8 has the same

Diagonal but the width makes the screen feel bigger so I find the Xperia v constantly pressed for space not all apps work properly on the unusual ratio either you however might disagree there's more vertical space for

Scrolling through Instagram and for reading and there's no wasted space when you're watching 21 by nine movies either way at least there's no notch to bother you if you're a fan of all this vertical space

You'll find this to be a really good old screen it's a full HD panel with a good pixel density of 450 PPI there's no 4k like on the Xperia one but that was overkill even there the display has a quite okay max brightness of 353

Nights and it can get up to five hundred and seventy-four nights when it's really bright around it's better in creator mode where auto brightness jumps to 631 nits and manual gets around 386 this Creator mode is meant to deliver more

Accurate colors there's a shift to blue in most display modes but generally the display was very accurate in creator mode with a warm white balance all of this is quite similar to what you'll find on the Xperia 1 the stereo speaker

Setup has very similar performance to its bigger brother to the Xperia v has very good loudness bass was a little weak but in general it's more than adequate

the dynamic vibration system which unsurprisingly uses a vibration motor is supposed to aid the perception of extra bass but in all honesty we didn't find it that satisfying in terms of

Headphones well first of all you're gonna have to use a dongle second performance is good enough for most people but it's not spectacular for a flagship so you might actually want to use good Bluetooth headphones and take

Advantage of Sony's audio codecs surprisingly despite having a smaller battery the Xperia v had some really good battery life it got 96 hours of endurance on our battery life test which is both better than the exterior one and

The regular s10 and the s10 II with the bundled fast charger you can get 53% in half an hour or 80% in an hour but you should know that the charging rate slows down significantly after that the Xperia v boasts a snapdragon 855 and

Six gigs of ram performance is flagship worthy but you're getting ufs 2.1 storage versus the newer ufs 3.0 that you'd find on a note 10 or one plus seven pro like I said Sony is all about minimalism and this naturally extends to

Their software it's a very clean version of Android Pi and only a few exterior tweaks on top you can use pill navigation or buttons but there are no gestures this is such a mess because the phone would feel so much faster if you

Don't have to scoot your hand down to at the home button or the back button the Xperia v also has side scents it's supposed to allow you faster access to shortcuts but unfortunately it doesn't work reliably enough to be truly useful

The Xperia v has a same triple camera setup as the Xperia One there's a main 12 megapixel camera with an F 1.6 aperture and ultra wide 12 megapixel snapper and a 12 megapixel telephoto camera Dave photos are great

With rich colors good exposure a great contrast and a ton of detail there's some noise here and there but that's because the algorithm works more to preserve detail than smudge noise the dynamic range isn't the best

The auto HDR helps at times but it's not always triggered when you need it and it works better at preserving highlight details than rescuing shadows shots using the telephoto were also excellent the ones is a little darker with this F

2.4 aperture but dynamic range is still good and we like the Nicene rendition and daytime shots like on the main snapper there's plenty of detail and sharpness and great colors auto focus struggles a bit and is unreliable for

Shots of people especially when I auto focus is enabled the ultra wide camera isn't quite as detailed as the other two but shots look good and offers superb contrast colors really pop and the exterior one settings allow for

Distortion correction if a fisheye look isn't to your taste however it lacks auto focus and burst mode and even in the regular camera mode it's a little more awkward to get to than the telephoto and main cam as far as

Portraits are concerned there's some oil painting like artifacts but otherwise there was great subject separation and natural-looking background blur in contrast to its predecessors the Xperia 1 is surprisingly good and low light

There isn't an actual night mode but when it's dark the phone creates a longer exposure type of shot that does its best to compensate for camera shake the resulting low-light photos are stunning they have plenty of detail low

Noise and well preserved colors not all highlights are blown and exposure is mostly even although you can't use a telephoto camera at night you can use the ultra wide pictures are still usable and have decent detail and low noise

Levels the Xperia 1 is equipped with an 8 megapixel front camera with an F 2.0 aperture when there's a lot of light they're detailed with true to life colors when the light is less bright images are softer although still plenty

Nice portrait selfies are rather middle-of-the-road and they don't have ideal background separation nor ideal D focusing 4k footage from the main camp has excellent contrast great dynamic range and colors

Are true to life there is a decent amount of detail what we've seen other flagships do better and full HD videos are some of the best we've seen have similar colors contrast and dynamic

Range when you're using the ultra wide camera for key videos are softer than those from the main cam and they're a little oversaturated as for the telephoto camera or key footage is also softer than the main

Camera although with better colors than the ultra wide however in full HD footage to match the quality that you'd get from the main camp the Sony Xperia v is a really good compact flagship it has excellent

Battery life a clean UI great performance and one of the best camera setups from Sony in recent years relative to the market the thing is it lacks something that will give it a huge advantage over a similar but cheaper

Devices from competing brands this is one of the best experience out there at the moment but it's still say that you should wait for the entire fall roster of flagship smartphones before you make the final

Call thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video hit the like button down below subscribe to the BAL I can and I'll see you guys next time