Sony Xperia 5 IV review: the coolest phone you won’t buy

The packaging of this Xperia 5 IV it contains no accessories whatsoever. In fact, we only have the manuals inside. The USB-C cable is not included either.

From a constructive point of view, this Xperia 5 IV is an exceptional smartphone. He is often alone 8.2mm and has a weight of 172 grams. Very little considering the materials with which it is made: aluminum and glass Gorilla Glass Victus. In your pocket is the top-of-the-range smartphone of 2022 that most “disappears”. In addition, this time the smartphone is resistant to water and dust according to the IP68 standard. To be picky we only point out how the smartphone is slightly slippery and how the volume keys are a bit small. The 21: 9 format (narrow and long) has never quite won us over, but we admit it’s mostly just a matter of habit and we don’t have a preference for it.

The smartphone is equipped with a processor Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 4 nanometer octa core.

It’s the penultimate iteration of Sony’s top-of-the-line processors. It is a processor that is now a year behind and that has been surpassed in various respects by the new version plus. Not a bad processor at all, but when aiming for the top of the range you expect … top of the range. We then 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal memory expandable via microSD, which is not at all obvious among high-end smartphones. We then find connectivity 5Gthe Wi-Fi 6EBluetooth 5.2 and of course the NFC chip.

The stereo sound guaranteed by this smartphone is very good and we also find the audio jack for headphones, a component now abandoned by all competitors. Thanks Sony for continuing to include it. Finally we find the dual SIM support thanks to the eSIM.

Let’s go back to the processor and the performance obtained for a moment. Sony has worked hard to contain the “hot spirits” of the Qualcomm CPU, but probably not enough.

It is not unusual to see it appear warning temperatures that are too high and the body heats up quickly. However, the latest update seems to have managed to limit the inconvenience to the user, even if the performance of the phone still drops after 4-5 minutes of use.

Sony Xperia 5 IV remains on the “classic” as far as cameras are concerned, once again focusing only on 12 megapixel sensors (where practically all the competition has adapted to higher resolution sensors). We have an optically stabilized ƒ / 1.7 main camera, a ƒ / 2.2 wide-angle camera and a 2.5X ƒ / 2.4 zoom camera. Added to these is also a 12 megapixel ƒ / 2.0 camera. It is an excellent photographic kit that covers most of the uses that can be made of a smartphone camera.

The interface is what we have seen in the last Sony a photographic app with multiple features divided into multiple modes of use. That Basic it is the only one that allows you to shoot via a virtual button and it is also the only one that allows you to record videos, even if only in 4K to 30fps.

This version has a fair number of features (even the one for portrait mode photos), but it is only by switching to Auto mode that you will be able to better control the focus. Then there are semi-manual shooting modes: automatic programming, speed priority and manual exposure. Many modes that often differ only in small details, making everything a bit chaotic. The sense of this division is to make those who use Sony Alpha cameras feel at home, but we believe that in the end for a smartphone it is better to think of something more suitable for the format. In addition there are two successive levels of use of the video part: Video Pro And Cinema Prowith only slightly different purposes.

Image quality is excellent in the daytime, where this Sony takes soft, natural shots in virtually any situation.

Photographers will undoubtedly appreciate the little invasiveness of artificial intelligence in the photos taken by this smartphone. The wide angle is also discreet (even if the resolution penalizes it a little) and the photos taken by the zoom camera are also good, where however the white balance is slightly imperfect. The situation changes in half-light and dark situations, where the scarce contribution of the software becomes a malus. Images appear extremely dark and highlights are not handled well. Sony should work on a better balance in this regard, leaving the professionals one mode pro in which to indulge oneself without the influence of software development.

Well the selfie camera, which is one of the most defined in the current market. Discrete videos, which however are not surprising. These suffer from exactly the same defects that we have talked about so far. In addition, you can record g or 30fpswhen in Video Pro mode (which is a separate app) you can get to 120fps.

A nice contradiction. At least you can switch between cameras while recording movies.

Sony Xperia 5 IV uses a beautiful 6.1-inch panel in 21: 9 format and technology OLED. The display supports the refresh rate increased to 120 Hz, although this fires arbitrarily and we don’t have the greater scalability offered by LTPO displays. The resolution is 1080 x 2520 pixels and the format as mentioned is 21: 9. The glass is always Gorilla Glass Victus and the panel supports theHDR10 +. There are many options for customizing the rendering of the panel and we also have a creation mode for those who want to manage the images on the screen of their smartphone with maximum fidelity. Too bad for the automatic brightness that always goes down too much when there is little ambient light.

Sony has always (or almost always) approached its software in a very pragmatic way, offering clean software (and therefore also easy to update) with few customizations.

In this case, many of Sony’s functions are concentrated in the camera and in the side menu that allows you to quickly start your favorite apps, even stacked, which is very easy in a screen of this size. It is also easy to open the apps in popup format and we have a game mode to maximize the performance during the sessions gaming and also allowing you to do live streaming. However, there are no concrete innovations in the interface that begins to feel a bit the weight of the years, both in terms of aesthetics and in terms of novelty. In addition, such a lean system should in fact favor updates, but Android 13 has not yet arrived and we are stopped at Android 12 with September 2022 patches at the time of review.

We then encountered some bugs, including an absurd one for those who the time in the lock screen is updated only once a day (and does not appear instead in thealways-on) and one that didn’t allow us to get out of the camera.

Not acceptable on a product of this type.

Despite the subtlety and lightness this Xperia 5 IV it has a 5,000 mAh battery inside, a good record. This allows it to get through the full day of use even under some stress and despite the fairly energy-intensive processor. There charging is fast at 30W and we also have wireless charging, although the company does not declare the speed.

Sony Xperia 5 IV is sold for 1050 € on Amazon. Elsewhere availability has not yet been announced. A high price, for a smartphone that is not without flaws and with a processor that is not the latest. With the right offers, however, it may be worth giving it a chance, given its peculiarities and peculiarities.