Sony xperia 1iii review cinematic speed

 ens you can get on a phone

like last year it's a six and a half

inch hdr oled

with as many pixels across the long side

as a 4k

tv but this year it's gotten its refresh

rate boosted to 120 hertz

which makes the android 11 software with

its minimal sony overlay

feel even faster than it already did

but honestly i've never been here for

the extravagant spec bumps

and a near 4k display on a smartphone

is and will always be in my opinion

crazy overkill

it doesn't matter how sharp a screen is

if it's hard

to see outdoors yet again this display

just doesn't get bright enough and

that's a big miss

so while i do genuinely love watching

video on this phone i love it for

different reasons

the lack of a notch or hole punch to

interrupt the screen

and the dual front-facing speakers which

are almost

half again as loud as last year's so you

don't have to do that stupid thing where

you cup your hand around a side firing

speaker

it's great not to have to do that

speaking of the sides they're studded

with the convenient keys i still miss

on pretty much every other phone the

textured camera shutter button is easy

to find by feel

it lets you half press it to focus and

you can set it to launch into either

photography or cinema cameras with a

long press

between that and the volume rocker sits

the fingerprint sensor and power button

which can also be programmed to launch a

different camera app if you double click

it

and beneath that is a dedicated google

assistant button

using this phone reminded me of when i

still reviewed cars i used to say

touchscreens are great but they're not

always the right choice

the more controls i can find by feel the

better experience i tend to have

with the one mark iii i can use that

shutter button to launch the camera as i

pull it from my pocket so that by the

time it gets into position

it's ready to take the shot the rest of

the phone is a mix of expected upgrades

and

some old favorites many manufacturers

have phased out

in the latter group an rgb notification

light and three and a half millimeter

headphone jack

emphasis on headphone stay tuned

the gorilla glass 6 on the back is now

frosted to better battle fingerprints

thank you

while the front got a promotion to

gorilla glass victus which scratched but

didn't shatter

after a pretty brutal sidewalk drop by

yours truly

also added reverse wireless charging to

complement the existing qi functionality

and there's now a 30 watt wired charger

included in the box

a great fast charging complement to

sony's optional slow charging feature

that better preserves battery longevity

and i'm glad that sony

is continuing to include it if it sounds

like a lot to love

it it really is but when it comes

to the camera experience this phone

often favors complexity

over quality camera tests battery life

and call quality

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video

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okay cameras the one mark iii basically

inherits

its primary and ultra wide 12 megapixel

cameras from its predecessor so

the big change sits behind this window

at the bottom of the array

sony has finally joined the likes of

huawei and samsung by adding a

periscope style telephoto camera but

while other phones use a feature like

this to add more zoom

sony decided to use a variable telephoto

lens here

what that means is that the optical

elements inside the phone physically

move

between a 70 millimeter and a 105

millimeter equivalent

and that essentially gives you two zoom

cameras in one

that cuts down on the number of cameras

sony had to put in and as my friends

david mel and david cogan pointed out to

me

it offers an exciting look into a

possible future where

maybe we only need to have one or two

variable cameras on our phones

instead of four or five fixed ones

on the software side there are

improvements too sony has integrated the

stock android camera app into its

photography pro hub

and that means when you hold down the

shutter button photography pro opens but

it opens in a tab called

basic which is easy to use and will be

familiar to most people

when you want to get more ambitious you

just swipe through to the various

professional modes to get more and more

granular control

i found this handy when automatic mode

would want to add a little too much

exposure to a scene

by hopping into manual and tweaking

shutter speed and iso i could get the

look i was after

without relying on the processing to do

it and even in basic mode

yes you do get last year's standout

feature that incredible

burst mode at up to 20 frames per second

with continuous autofocus that's able to

keep the subject locked

even if it has to lock onto an eyeball

and even if that eyeball isn't human

seagulls eating parking lot pepperoni

old timers bumming on the beach

top gun type volleyball serves i could

play with burst mode

all day but photo samples aren't worth

much without some competitive context

for this review i shot alongside a

samsung galaxy s21

ultra and the differences as always are

apparent despite toning it down in

recent generations samsung still leans

toward

punchy photos in its processing that

means more saturation more contrast and

usually more sharpness than sony's

photos which tend to be

more neutral truer to life

samsung's tuning also prioritizes

dynamic range

which means it's able to pull more

detail from the shadows and often

i appreciate that but sometimes it comes

at the expense of the kind of contrast

or drama i'm

going for now remember photography is

a subjective art form so in good

lighting and close range

the differences between these phones

boil down to personal preference

it's when you get further out that

things start

looking worse for sony that variable

telephoto may be groundbreaking but it

also takes up more space

so the one mark iii can realize a

maximum of 4.4 x

optical zoom compared to the samsung's

dedicated 3x and

10x telephoto cameras the result

in almost every zoom shot i took i

preferred

the samsung output the galaxy s21

ultra's auto mode is better able to cope

with extreme contrast

and because of its higher magnification

lenses it's more likely to produce a

photo i

want to keep or share also

just out of curiosity i tried some burst

mode shooting on the samsung to see if

sony's performance

really outshined it as much as the hype

suggests and

you know the samsung held up better than

i expected

after sundown neither of these phones

impressed me in terms of

image quality each has its own issues

but at least the samsung could usually

keep

focus on the xperia that wonderful

mid-morning photo you were able to get

out of your breakfast sandwich

with the perfectly accurate color and

the nice creamy bokeh

after dinner time devolves into a muddy

motion blurred mess that nothing short

of a tripod can help with

in our current once in a lifetime summer

when bar room photos and midnight

selfies are about to be at an

all-time high this is a deeply

frustrating camera to use

and don't come at me telling me well

professional photographers don't party

they don't need to take selfies

stop it even photographers need to cut

loose all right

speaking of frustration let's talk about

video

initially i'd intended to shoot the

entire road trip portion of this review

in sony's cinema pro app

but while this looks like a control

panel for a professional camera

remember it's connected to a phone

camera

so it's like the worst of both worlds

you're getting all the complexity with

none of the performance everything takes

five times as long to shoot

and unless you're in a studio

controlling the environment the end

result is

seldom worth the added time david cogan

explained

part of the reason why what did we try

first

90 and now we're down to 45 145 45.

these are degrees yeah

and it's still overexposed because

because the aperture is fixed and so all

you have is the

frame rate and the iso and

the takeaway is that i shot the majority

of the road trip review in the basic

video mode only switching to cinema pro

when i wanted to tell the spooky montauk

project part of the story

let's um let's take a look

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this would be a great situation for tap

to focus

if it works

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oh yeah oh a powerful reveal

contention that maybe there is such a

thing as too much garlic

perhaps deserves a review

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i'm standing between two of the most

significant

and yet wildly divergent landmarks in

new york state

the first and unquestionably the most

famous is

right over my shoulder the montauk

lighthouse commissioned by george

washington

completed in 1797 and marker of the very

easternmost point in new york state

next stop france

and the second is this an fps 35 search

radar right behind me here at the

decommissioned montauk air force station

this is one of only 12 ever built from

the 1960s

and it's the only one left standing this

was part of a system called

sage or semi-automated ground

environment that was meant to protect

the us from

soviet bombers during the cold war

but if you grew up here as a teenager

you may have heard a slightly different

story

that story that this air force station

never actually closed when that mission

became obsolete

instead continuing to operate for years

as a clandestine installation under the

control of shadowy government forces

who exploited the old radar technology

for radio frequency based

mind control experiments combined with

tales of underground facilities odd

behaviors in montauk village and the

fact that the station remained closed to

the public for years despite officially

being classified as state park

it all added up to a conspiracy theory

juicy enough to prompt me

and literally hundreds of other

teenagers who grew up on eastern long

island

to repeatedly break into the base to try

to unlock its secrets

it was only after the application of

some critical thinking and the

bare minimum of research that i

discovered that the underground

facilities were in fact

leftover world war ii coastal defense

emplacements

the parks delayed opening to the public

the result of environmental factors and

bureaucratic red tape

the so-called odd behavior and montauk

either fabricated or

simply a side effect of a small town

where not much happens in the winter

but the mystery was one of many things i

treasured about this town when i would

drive out here as a teen

in search of adventure and decades later

the duffer brothers would leverage that

mystery

to transform the lore into a netflix

phenomenon called

stranger things

if you're wondering about that poor

audio quality and join the club

i had to tweak it just to make sure you

could hear me over the tree noise

at first i thought it might be a

byproduct of the intelligent wind filter

but turning it off didn't seem to make

much difference now i'd anticipated

problems like these so i'd planned on

using my rode wireless go microphones

for those

stand-ups but the headphone jack on this

phone

doesn't support analog audio for that

purpose

in other bizarre oversights for a camera

centric phone

you can't tap to focus when rolling

video in the basic mode

you can't switch which camera you're

using in the middle of a video shot

and the interface doesn't invert when

you turn the phone upside down

look you can say that this thing is so

specialized that

sony only expects to sell like 5 000 of

them you can make

that argument but it seems to me that

it's possible to build a smartphone that

includes all of those specialty features

without sacrificing all the basics that

people have come to expect

from their flagship smartphone camera

you know things like reliable autofocus

and good to great night mode and that

kind of fire and forget reliability

that's like

i don't have time to get everything

tweaked just right i'm just gonna spray

and pray

fire and forget and hey what do you know

it came out and it's not like sony isn't

capable of building the hardware

to do that it powers the optics in most

flagships and heart phones

it just seems to be unwilling or unable

to do the work

when it comes to its own house branded

smartphone

and that's weird finish up with the

basics

i didn't have as bad a time with this

battery as most other reviewers

seem to but there's no question it's not

the longest lasting phone in history

it would probably last a bit longer if

it didn't have to drive a high-res

display at near max brightness every

time you went outside if you work in an

office you'll almost certainly make it

to bedtime

but if you're making extensive use of

the cameras as i did

you'll definitely need to top up before

dinner

and finally phone calls are a similar

mixed bag

callers sounded excellent but wind

rejection on my side was pretty terrible

i frequently had to repeat myself or

just find a corner out of the weather to

be understood

and as an added annoyance my thumb kept

accidentally unlocking the phone while i

talked on it

which led to a lot of fumble fingers by

my cheek meat

nothing about the xperia one mark iii

should come as a surprise

if you've followed sony mobile over the

past couple years

the company has leaned further away from

the mainstream

further toward specialty boutique

products

if xperia phones were jewelry they'd be

tool watches

so it follows that the price is on the

high side at about 1300 us dollars

which includes a set of noise canceling

earbuds and a metric ton of call of duty

cp points

if you order by september 26th

to me that price isn't the problem and

this is one of the most powerful

smartphones you can buy with excellent

design to boot

but its value is inextricably

intertwined with its camera

a camera so dependent on being in

professional hands to shine

that well it's just tough to recommend

to anyone except

the type of professional photographers

who'd be better off shooting with the

mirrorless cameras they've probably

already got in their bag

anyway this review was produced

following two weeks with the sony xperia

1 mark iii review

sample provided by sony but as always

the company didn't have any editorial

input into this video

nor did it provide compensation for or

receive an early preview of

same they're seeing it right alongside

you for the first time

for more from montauk be sure to check

out david cogan's real world test

featuring the samsung galaxy book go

that's the video he was shooting while

we were out there and i think he ended

up having even more fun than i did

i will take that as a win coming from

fisher

please subscribe to the mr mobile on

youtube if you'd like to see more videos

like this

until next time i'm michael fisher

thanks for watching

and stay mobile my friends

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