the sony xperia 1 mark iii is the world’s first smartphone to pair a 4k hdr led display with a 120hz refresh rate which is possible thanks to a dedicated x1 display chipset it is also the first to make use of a variable telephoto lens a dual phase detection sensor and of course the first to embed a 360 degree reality audio experience through its front-facing stereo speakers now while all that sounds insanely impressive it certainly increased the premium price up even more with all that said it’s time to deep dive into my extremely detailed full review of the sony xperia 1 mach 3. I have the frosted gray color variants of the device you can also pick it up in frosted black or frosted purple but if you want the gray variants it only comes in the 256 gig version of the phone so if you opt for the 512 gig version you’re not going to be able to get the grey in your hands we have gorilla glass victus on the front and gorilla glass 6 on the back with an aluminum
frame sandwiching them together and the back is a matte finish though they are a slight tad of fingerprint smudges that are apparent so you can purchase this stand cover case which looks fantastic i actually got it for free when i purchased the sony xperia one mark iii it does have a kicker at the back which makes it pretty simple and easy to use when watching movies or playing games in that wonderful 21 by nine aspect ratio display mode of course the back looks absolutely phenomenal and underneath the hood with a 4500mah battery which has increased as well as the increased 30 watt pdy charging which comes in the box wireless charging as well ip68 certification and of course 5g on the right hand side we have a volume rocker as well as a power button that doubles up as a fingerprint sensor a voice assistant button which is something new and the old school shutter button we’ve seen on sony xperia devices also have a dual sim 5g tray which can also support microsdxc expansion as well as a 3.1 usb type-c ports and two microphones one at the bottom one at the top and a 3.5 millimeter high res audio jack as well as dual stereo
speakers which support 360 degree audio dolby atmos and dse the camera bump is pretty minimal and pretty similar to other flagships around though the very photo enhanced devices have a much larger camera module meaning that the xperia 1 mark 3 doesn’t make much of a surface wobble when on a flat surface that is when it comes to the designs actually did a poll on my channel most people absolutely adore the xperia 1 mark 3’s design and i have to admit it is so darn clean but it looks so similar to its predecessor it is a lot lighter than other smartphones around but it is a lot narrower with the banana shape that has come across from generation to generation from the mark 1 to the mark 2 to the mark 3 though it’s lighter and honestly it’s not that much taller than others but it is a hell of a lot narrower making it easy to grip the back looks gorgeous like we’ve mentioned so many times but what about the front well we are welcomed to a 6.5 inch 21 by 9 cinema wide display it is 4k hdr early d 120 hertz refresh rate 240 hertz touch sampling rate 240 hertz motion blur reduction and of course powering all of this is the wonderful x1 mobile display chipset comparing to other devices around the 1 billion colors does make a difference it is the smallest screen out of the bunch over here because of the top and bottom bezel that you see there some people actually still prefer this weirdly enough i have asked a couple people a lot of people aren’t the biggest fans of the punch hole notch nevertheless thousand three hundred nits is the unofficial statement of the brightness of the xperia one mark iii which actually puts it on par with many other flagship devices around and testing it in my studio over here it’s actually brighter with auto brightness off compared to the s21 ultra which is a good thing and taking it outside wondering what that could do on
automatic brightness because it can get high with peak using a lux you need to times it by 10 to get to the nits of brightness and we’re getting well over 1 300 nits of brightness outdoors which is a huge step up for sony especially for people that have used the predecessors when it comes to screen to body ratio of course it’s not as impressive as other devices around due to the bezel at the top and the bottom let me know what you guys think of this old-school design in terms of the screen i don’t know it doesn’t really bother me too much since we have a 4k display over here with a 120 hertz refresh rates meaning that it’s finally matching the refresh rates of the four devices on the left and out doing the apple iphone 12 pro max which is still stuck to 60hz hopefully that changes near the end of the year it is just as smooth as all other devices here the xperia 1.
3 that is not the iphone and it looks even better thanks to it being 4k with extra clarity so i’m not too sure how many pixels you can actually see on such a tiny screen 4k is enabled using the creator mode and while we usually could disable the motion blur reduction there is no option for it it’s just 240 hertz motion blur reduction all the time the creator mode looks slightly dimmer than the standard mode but it does pop out the colors and make it look pretty nice meaning that you can actually auto create the creator mode within individual apps instead of having it on all the time which is great you also use the x1 chipset for mobile based on bravia tv over here to enhance video as well which is great and taking a screenshot when in an app that is utilizing 120 hertz and the 4k you could see that it is at 4k and 120 fps after taking the screenshots same thing with antutu and the same thing with youtube that youtube is kept at 60fps when you do decide to pinch to zoom on youtube you lose a lot of the video because of the strange 21 by 9 aspect ratio display but we can adjust quite a bit i’m
talking white balance of course over here and we do have dark mode too but when you do decide to enable dark mode it’s not truly dark it’s kind of gray with some things being very black most of the time it just looks washed out in all apps which is not a big deal breaker i kind of think it looks snazzy but it’s not going to save your battery as much as if it were to paint all the leds completely black of course we also have an always on display though not too many options and you can’t really customize it that much it is a nice and bright a lot brighter than other ones around now it is going to chomp some of your battery thankfully it has increased to 4 500 milliamps we do have a physical fingerprint sensor this time around the same as the xperia one mark ii of last year though it is improved quite a bit it is a lot faster than that i can’t say it’s faster than other flagships using an in-display fingerprint sensor or even the iphone 12 pro max’s 3d face id since it lacks a fingerprint sensor but it is a hell of a lot quicker compared to last year and unfortunately there is still no option for face unlock that is probably because when you touch the power button it just uses the fingerprint sensor anyway with the selfie cam we have a 24 millimeter lens over here it is unfortunately only 8 megapixels photos come out pretty clear but as soon as you go into half or even full bokeh the edge detection is horrendous and when enabling every single mode that you can use within the portrait option of the camera user interface you kind of land up looking like a bit of a bobby doll what’s up guys this is technic recording a 1080p at 30 fps video using the brand new sony xperia 1 mark iii yes it is a flagship and yes it cost a hell of a lot of money but no the selfie cam cannot exceed 1080p or 30 frames per second there is also a feature that you can use across the board with all cameras including the selfie and all of the back cams as well which is called wind filter intelligent wind filter right now it’s currently off i’m going to go ahead and turn it on right now and now intelligent wind filter has been enabled let me know if you guys can hear a difference there’s not too much wind it’s a nice sunny day here in shanghai nevertheless let me know if you guys can actually tell the difference recording video at night using the selfie cam is not really a go-to for any device so just as other competitors around doesn’t look too fresh taking a pic using the selfie camera knight doesn’t look terrible
there’s no night mode option but turning the flash on makes it look great the biggest selling point of this phone is arguably the display but also the cameras of course and this time around we get welcomed by a similar 12 megapixel trio of cameras compared to the predecessor though the telephoto is now variable that can adjust between 70 to 105 millimeters lens in focal length that is this time around we also have a 3d itaf lens and of course we have zeiss optics to cover them all up before we jump into the actual photo samples it’s worth jumping into the camera user interface we have basic mode over here which is pretty much a common user interface that you’d see on many other devices you have your zoom functions you can switch well we also have ar zoom resolution zoom over here that’s something new for all phones but you can change the bokeh over here and unlike other phones you can change your continuous shooting or single shot shooting to high or low or just a single shot and unlike other phones you can do it at 20 frames per second and unlike other phones you have a two-phase shutter button but otherwise the camera ui in the basic settings mode is pretty common compared to others but the thing that changes is when you flick from basic to auto or go to program auto or any other camera mode that you’ve come to know and love within dslrs that is very different on this phone compared to any other phone around this is a fully fledged dslr software within the xperia one mark iii which has been inspired by sony’s own alpha team and yes there are a ton of things you can tweak pretty much everything you can tweak within a dslr camera you can tweak here and focusing is not too shabby i wouldn’t say it’s on par with sony’s alpha cameras but the ultra wide cam looks great with regular look i’m not a pro photographer over here so whenever i show the pro app that i’m using and i’m adjusting my own iso
and shutter speed so on and so forth i’m not going to do as good of a job as a pro would but i can say that the optical zoom looks fantastic as well as the main cameras even when using the basic mode 4.4 times optical zoom looks great even on the pro and 12.5 times you can enable the ai zoom it makes a world of a difference moving to the pro mode i kind of got my white balance off a bit there as well as my exposure but i’ll get used to you know it’s actually kind of exciting to be able to use something so small on the go all the time and you can also take raw pics but unfortunately my phone heated up within the first 20 minutes of taking these incredible photos which kind of sucks of course we can use the 20 fps shutter button to get a crazy amount of snaps in a short amount of time using burst and it looked pretty great though it wasn’t the clearest and there is a macro mode which only automatically turns on though it doesn’t look the best there is no bokeh in this shot of buzz i put on half bokeh over here using the basic camera app and going into the pro mode using background blur and foreground blur you can really start to have some fun with it now comparing it to the s21 ultra just with a regular snap these are all regular snaps over here with the s21 ultra bin down to 12 megapixel using the same resolution as the xperia 1 mark iii but of course it has been done to form one super pixel you can see quite a lot it’s a lot brighter on the samsung but sometimes there’s just a tad more detail on the xperia which is not what i was expecting over here though it is slightly different when we start zooming in of course we have a larger focal length when it comes to the ultra wide meaning that we’re getting a higher field of view which is a plus toward the s21 ultra and of course we can zoom in even more with a periscope optical zoom of 10x on the samsung and a max digital zoom of 100x which just completely out does the xperia 1 mark 3’s
12.5 x and looks a lot better even at 10x when it comes to night mode both of them are using automatic ai night modes over here there is only an automatic feature within the xperia you cannot just adjust it yourself unless you go into pro mode and you change the exposure rates but taking the pictures compared to the s21 ultra of course the s21 ultra looks better but it makes it look like daytime whereas the xperia makes it look as it is in reality using the pro mode once again i am not a professional photographer over here it was kind of tough for me it took me a hell of a long time to get these shots right without them blurring out it is going to be hard if you do decide to purchase yourself an xperia 1 mark 3 and you are not a professional photographer already but when you do get the right shot it is just so darn satisfying and someone asked me for a long exposure shot with a low iso and shutter speed and there it is let me know what you guys think now when it comes to video recording within the basic app we can use hdr but only at 30fps modes and there is no 4k 60 fps with a regular 16 by 9 aspect ratio within the main app and when you go into the cinema pro app you can do 4k at 60 fps but only at an aspect ratio of 21 by nine meaning you’re first of all not getting full 4k but you also can’t record 4k 60fps with a regular 16×9 aspect ratio and you have to create a complete project for it meaning if you just want a quick 4k 60fps clip of say your kid running through the garden you’re not going to be able to do it nice and snappy like you’ve come to do on most phones now we do have 1080p at 60fps on the regular basic app which looks pretty good so you can take a video of your kit like that i guess for all fps main over here using the basic photo app um and you can also shoot 4k 24 fps using hdr 10 which looks phenomenal it’s it kind of it looks like a movie i mean this
looks pretty great guys you have to admit now comparing video to the s21 ultra of course the s21 ultra can do 16 by nine at 4k 60 fps but since the xperia is limited to 30 i’m just comparing it like this so that you can compare detail and not fps i think they are pretty much on par sometimes the sony camera actually looks more movie-like than that of the s21 ultra if that is an aesthetic you guys are into gives it a bit of a darker tinge now we do have a movie-like option that is cinema 4k using the cinema pro application over here and it looks phenomenal of course you have to adjust the iso and the shutter speed and all that jazz by yourself once again i’m not a pro videographer or photographer that is so it’s really tough for me but i can’t say i didn’t have fun because i had oodles of fun 4k 30 fps using ultra wire in the photo app 4k 30 fps is limited on the ultra wide cam even within the cinema pro app over here and we do have venus cs which many of you have come to know and love professional photographers and videographers that is gives it kind of an old-school thriller tinge over here to your video which is pretty much all rights reserved to dslrs it’s really cool to see it on a phone over here of course we did see it last year as well and when it comes to stabilization turning stabilization off within settings you can see it’s very janky and wobbly enabling stabilization it’s night and day compared to when it was off and stabilization on with the ultra wide cam kind of gives it like a gopro feel i am running quite fast i was pretty scared of falling over here nevertheless moving on from that we do have slow motion 720p at 120 fps using the basic app though we can record cinema 4k with a strange 21×9 resolution at 4k 120 fps which is great but it would have been
awesome to see slo-mo 4k 120 fps within the regular app for people that aren’t so nerdy when it comes to professional photography and when it comes to recording night video once again a lot brighter on the s21 ultra but the s21 ultra blows out all the lights and makes it tries to make it look like daytime when it’s not actually prefer the footage on the xperia 1 mark 3 as opposed to the s21 ultra when it comes to night videographer since the xperia 1 mark 3 actually handles all the lights a hell of a lot better even though the scene is not completely brightened up it does capture what i’m actually seeing and not what my brain truly wants to see which is what the s21 ultra is trying to give you cameras all well and great and that was a huge chunk of the video i hope you guys enjoyed it but of course if you want to use your camera phone you have to charge it up of course we have 30 watt wide charging and they haven’t announced how fast the wireless charging is last year’s was 11 watt i’m assuming it’s the same over here we can now do reverse wireless charging which is great but because the wireless charging is probably only 11 watts reverse is probably only 5 watts which kind of sucks and we do have reverse usb power share which is great charging another phone using a wired cable also have battery care over here which allows you to cap your battery capacity to 90 so it doesn’t degrade your battery over time or just charge up the last 10 percent just before you decide to wake up and of course once your phone is all charged up you are welcome to android 11.
There is no heavy skin over this it’s pretty much stock software with google integrated on the left and in the middle and through the play store and with a quick search box at the bottom which is great even on the chinese variants of the phone which i have here once you throw google on this phone it becomes a global google fi device though when you remove the search bar at the bottom you have to manually rearrange all your icons which is pretty time consuming for a reviewer such as myself going into the play store works as it would and using google assistant actually works even with the integrated google assistant ai button which is fantastic for those of you who know what i’m talking about good on you we also have a bar on the side called sidesense of course you can disable it but you can use this to quickly jump into apps or jump into multitasking and thanks to the long and lanky display over here of 21×9 aspect ratio yes it is possible to watch a video at the top and player game at the same time which is what i’m doing right now with my previous video i hope that you guys did check that one out of course this is the 2.0 to that baby and yes we can do a pop-out window of a video or any other app that is within settings you can adjust that too and there’s one-handed operation mode over here though it doesn’t actually work with full screen navigation gestures so you have to use side sense if you do want to use it on the go you’re going to have to switch to the three button layouts in terms of navigation and getting around your phone you just double tap the home button but i do prefer full screen navigation gestures and you can indeed adjust the sensitivity of pulling from the left or right to go back but when you have full screen navigation gestures enabled most games crop in the screen because of the aspect ratio of the phone but the strange thing is it’s not the game it’s actually the phone software which is something that i complained about last year they still haven’t fixed it does work when you use the three button navigation instead of the full screen gestures this really needs to get fixed but fortunately the haptic feedback is absolutely fantastic and not only using it as day-to-day use we also have something called dynamic vibration which has also been brought forward from last year and yes it vibrates your hands with every little bit of noise three
is finally here and being that it has first released in china i have managed to get my hands on it quite early that being said the prices in the top right corner of the screen reflect the current chinese price of course talking about audio we do have dolby atmos which is what we’ve also seen on many flagship phones these days but changing things up is the 360 spatula sound coming through either the front facing speakers or optimized through any headset you plug into them using obviously 360 degree audio system software now the speakers are said to be 40 louder compared to the xperia one mark ii but how do they compare against two of the most impressive sounding smartphones around enemy contact me now of course when it comes to gaming we do have game enhancer which we’ve seen on sony devices before where you can add games to it and then you can have an on-screen overlay when you’re playing the game to do things such as screen record this time around you can actually screen record at 120 fps though you’re limited to 720p when you do decide to do that we do have hs power control which i’ll show you in a sec and it actually gives you an option for a 240 screen refresh rate though it actually puts black slides in kind of frame skips so it’s actually 120 fps not 240 fps don’t get confused with that we also have an audio equalizer we can adjust the display’s colors of course and once we’re in the game we can take screenshots and we can take recordings using that 120 fps mode which is awesome we also have the options that i just showed you at a glance that you can quickly
jump into which is great and you can put some sensitive optimized touching areas over there most impressive thing here is the hs power control when you plug in your charging cable it doesn’t use the battery it just uses the power outlets but when you do pop in your 3.5 millimeter audio device and you have hs power control plugged in as well it’s kind of a little bit uncomfortable you can pop out any app of your choice when playing a game which is great you can also block everything out and you can change your picture mode to gaming which makes it look more realistic but less vivid and you also have an audio equalizer too which is of course great as well and keeping the brightness maxed out is not a good thing since it limits the features it just popped up saying that because the phone overheats it and got to almost 70 degrees in celsius and i didn’t even play the game it was just five minutes of me showcasing the game enhanced features when inside of a game talking about gentian impact over here which is the reason the phone overheats it so much when you’re getting between 48 and 60 fps on max graphics over here the game is capped at 60 fps so it’s no surprise just most phones with snapdragon 888 chipsets can do a solid 60 most of the time so it’s kind of a bummer and the ps5 controller is still not supported for the xperia 1 mark iii it just kind of flies around the place and the stick drift is a real problem even when
jumping onto the phone using the new dual sense controller from the ps5 but you can still use an xbox controller which is ironic but doable call of duty mobile over here very high graphics the max fps here is 6d unfortunately it can go to 90 but only on medium graphics we don’t have that option yet i’m pretty sure it will get included in the future and moving on to pubg mobile hdr graphics with extreme fps here which is 60 once again the game can go up to 90 fps but there is no support for the xperia one mark iii as of yet i’m pretty sure it will get support relatively soon but a solid 60 fps is definitely welcome and now we actually can make use of the ultra hd mode within pubg mobile because we have an ultra hd display over here though it is capped at 40 fps of course we’re not utilizing 120 fps it still looks absolutely stunning now moving on to dead trigger 2 which usually doesn’t have an fps cap at all we’re capping at 60 over here which kind of sucks once again an issue with the game not necessarily an issue with the phone i’m pretty sure this will get fixed in the future we are of course getting a solid 60 fps max graphics in bullet force max fps over here we’re sitting at pretty much a solid 120 fps fluctuating between 110 and 121 it feels good it looks fantastic i just can’t get over this display and of course you’re not going to have any distractions in terms of touching the edges of your device thanks to the added little borders over there which are some will like some not really enjoy the aesthetic of the display and of course real racing three going all the way up to 120 fps as well pretty solid over there but what about benchmarks well of course
we have 12 gigs of lpddr5 ram we have ufs a 3.1 storage and we have that wonderfully powered snapdragon 888 chipset which is powering the whole device and a huge 4500 milliamp hour battery which has increased from the 4000 milliamp hour battery of last year which is good to see we’re using game enhance here and performance mode to jump through and tutu geekbench and 3dmark wildlife and after doing all of those testing out the battery percentage strain it drained by seven percent at a rate of 21 milliamp hours per minute and the temperature jumped up by 15.7 degrees in celsius so it was better than the average snapdragon 888 chipset powered smartphones on my channel in terms of milliampere permanent drain as well as temperature gained but the phone did certainly throttle and that is why the screen is dim even though i have the brightness max start nevertheless talking about antutu over here we got a score of 818 000 which puts it second on the list of snapdragon 888 chipsets devices filmed in this video and moving on to geekbench version five we’ve got a score of one one two four for single core and three two nine one for multi-core which puts it pretty similar to all other snapdragon 888 chipset smartphones around as well as 3dmark wildlife which got an fps of 33.2 which is slightly above the s21 ultra and slightly below the other snapdragon 88 powered devices the sony xperia 1 mark 3 is arguably the cleanest looking designed smartphone of the year but aside from its matte back finish it looks identical to its predecessor which means it’s just as
narrow and just as tall but in all honesty it kind of grows on you and makes you realize just how fat other phones have become the only thing getting in the way of the xperia’s neat rear glass back finish is the camera module which once again looks identical to the mark ii but does have some worthy improvements mainly within the zoom department which has increased in terms of optical and digital depth and quality thanks to that variable telephoto lens but unfortunately falls short of its competitors not only in zooming functionality but also the ability to generate consistent shots from a simple point and shoot perspective that’s not to say the camera system isn’t capable because it very much is it’s just a lot more capable in the hands of a professional photographer with its basic camera ui taking a major back seat however the display is very much in the driving seats thanks to its improved brightness same grades 4k 10 bit early d display and long overdue high 120 hertz refresh rate which translates to quality looking fluidity across the board and while some games also take advantage of the display powered by the x1 display chip and flagship snapdragon 888 processing chip other games just can’t handle the heat gaming software within sony’s latest flagship is no gimmick either thanks to hs power control 120 fps screen recording and of course audio and video tuning speaking of software sony’s take on android 11 is very much stock-like with great optimizations and welcome extra features the pro camera and video software is also littered with features though take some getting used to if you aren’t already familiar with dslrs the sony xperia 1 mark iii houses all the same flagship features found within other top-end flagship smartphones and then some i mean are there any other phones in the world that have a 4k 120hz display variable telephoto lens or 360 degree spatula audio if your answer is no then that’s exactly why the xperia 1 mark iii is so darn expensive it truly is one of a kind
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