Sony Xperia 1 IV review: The first smartphone with real optical zoom, 4K OLED & jack

[Redaktion]

Sony's Xperia 1 IV comes with a variable zoom lens, thus making use of real optical zoom in a smartphone. Cameras aside, the flagship phone sports other unusual features such as a status LED, a microSD slot, a headphone jack and a shutter button.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Sony-Xperia-1-IV-review-The-first-smartphone-with-real-optical-zoom-4K-OLED-jack.639206.0.html

[anon]

Thank goodness Sony keeps producing the Xperia line. Without them we would not have any lighter, slimmer options than gaming phones that retain notchless screens and SD card readers alongside flagship SoCs.

On the cameras, a simple side-by-side snapshot comparison with the competitors misses the other advantages mentioned, like the dedicated shutter button, parameter adjustments, and focus options. It's ironic that of the benchmark scores, the camera score is the lowest of the bunch. Sony is marching to the beat of their own drummer and I hope they continue to do so--to keep the good aspects of their product that do not directly contribute to test scores.

[vertigo]

The Xperia 1 IV uses a periscope lens for the first time in a smartphone

Wrong. Huawei and Oppo (and possibly others) have already done this. This is either very poor reporting or poor wording. If the intent was to say it was the first time Sony has done so, then it needs to say that.

[LL]

That selfie photo is horrible with so much processing, that is even unacceptable in lower medium phone.
That is a marketing disaster, if the narrative is centred in photo capabilities then you cannot fail in that.

[NikoB]

The IMX557 is installed in the main camera, as in the predecessor. The lens are optically stabilized and offer good results in daylight, even if subjects are heavily resharpened. In dark surroundings, photos are reasonably illuminated, but with lots of noise and the image sharpness is not very pronounced - not really ideal for this price range. On the other hand, the image quality can still be optimized via the very extensive camera software. Like the Xperia 1 III, the current Xperia flagship not only offers numerous parameter adjustments, but also the well-known Alpha camera features, such as eye autofocus with real-time object tracking and continuous HDR shooting at 20 fps.

The highlight of the Sony flagship is clearly the variable periscope optics with loss-free zoom between 85 mm and 125 mm. Behind the variable telephoto lens is an optically stabilized 1/3.5-inch sensor that works steplessly between a magnification of 3.5x and 5.2x. However, we are not very impressed by the image quality. The sharpness could be much better and details are not accentuated either. Even an iPhone 13 Pro with the 5x hybrid zoom (3x optical) produces a sharper picture of our test subject than the Xperia 1 IV.

The 16 mm ultra-wide-angle camera of the Xperia 1 IV has good dynamics and a solid level of sharpness. However, the camera optics with EIS also produce some image flaws and other high-end smartphones offer more in terms of details.

The people have long been a belief that for a completely inexplicable reason, the manufacturer of top sensors on the planet - Sony, does not know how to make cameras in his own smartphones.

Although everything should be exactly the opposite and it is better for their smartphones by photo/video units simply should not be on the planet. But apparently this is a kind of "gentleman" agreement with companies specializing in the smartphones so that they buy sensors from Sony and further...

[JoeBlack]

An excellent example how not to do zoom camera.
Sadly Sony and half🐴 solutions are too common for my taste.
Overpriced and under delivering ... sad, but typical Sony phone.

[Jacob]

Hello,

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. After consultation with the reviewer, I determined that this was an incorrect (and misleading) translation of the original, and so I have adjusted the sentence to better reflect the intended meaning.

The "for the first time" does not refer to the periscope optics per se, but to the variable zoom. A Huawei P40 pro or Oppo Find x3 Pro have periscope optics with a fixed zoom of 5x or 10x. But the Xperia 1 IV has a variable zoom, i.e. loss-free between 3.5x and 5.2x.

Cheers!

The Xperia 1 IV uses a periscope lens for the first time in a smartphone

Wrong. Huawei and Oppo (and possibly others) have already done this. This is either very poor reporting or poor wording. If the intent was to say it was the first time Sony has done so, then it needs to say that.

[Ezzelin]

This isn't even the first camera with a variable optical periscope zoom, so I don't think it can claim to be the first. The Asus ZenFone Zoom did that years ago.

[Rob Littler]

There's something wrong with your SD card test results.

I've just tested my Xperia 1 IV with a 1 TB Sandisk SD card and had 57.6 MB/s sequential read in CPDT.