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00:00Okay, I love me some Sony, but this should win an award for narrowest target demographic of all time
00:09Hey, what's up, I'm KBHD here and this is a brand new smartphone from Sony
00:14It's called the Sony Xperia Pro. So a lot of you guys may remember
00:17I pretty recently did a video on why people don't buy Sony phones
00:22Where I you know, I gave their recent phones a lot of credit and admired how technically impressive they were
00:27But I eventually landed basically on the conclusion that people don't buy these because they're focused on
00:33Enthusiast features at the expense of the everyday normal experience
00:38There's just not a recipe for selling a lot of them. So then they drop this new phone and this phone
00:43This phone takes that imbalance
00:46Farther than any phone I've ever seen for all the good and all the bad
00:52So just looking at this guy, you know, the phone itself is pretty understated
00:55It doesn't seem that special right off the top
00:58It's basically an Xperia 1 Mark II again, which was a great phone, but it's a year old now
01:03So it's the same Snapdragon 865 same internal specs same 4k display
01:09Same triple camera system on the back. But as you can kind of start to see it's modified in a few key ways and it costs
01:20$2,500
01:21Okay. Okay. Hold on a second. It's called the Pro and
01:25You know, we know that the pro phones are the the highest end ones the best of the best
01:29So what's so special about this one? Right hot take this phone is the only real
01:35Pro phone. It's the only phone that deserves the word pro in the name. Okay, so we have iPhone 12 Pro cool
01:42Huawei mate 40 Pro nice OnePlus 8 Pro, but those phones are just using the word pro to sell you
01:49You know upscale everyday phones this
01:53Phone is an actual
01:56Professional tool so it starts with the design right at the bottom of this phone. You'll find a literal HDMI port
02:03So that's a micro HDMI plug behind this flap alongside the USB type-c so you don't see that very often
02:09So keep this in mind and then instead of straight glass and metal this phone is coated in this black
02:14Polycarbonate jacket all the way around on the sides on the back even on the front and it's pretty nice actually
02:20There's no camera bump. So the phone sits perfectly flat and honestly, you probably don't even really need a case for this phone
02:26It's kind of rugged eyes that way you do lose wireless charging for some reason
02:30But as you'll see pretty soon, that's not a huge concern
02:34Then last but not least this phone has an array of 5g antennas
02:38You have four beam forming antennas all the way around this phone that no doubt take advantage of the plastic jacket
02:45Instead of metal or glass that's way better for reception and all that is packing to a body just a little bit bigger than the
02:51Previous Xperia 1 mark 2 so this phone is designed to act as a primary viewfinder for a Sony
03:00Mirrorless camera or really any camera with HDMI for that matter
03:04So they've built custom software and hardware into the phone to make it happen. So when you put it all together
03:09It looks something like
03:12this
03:14Not super elegant, but not too bad
03:18Just very technically impressive. So the phone connects to the camera via that HDMI port
03:24There's a custom app with an extra custom button on the side of the phone to trigger it and immediately you get the 4k
03:31HDMI feed on the phone now a couple things about this number one
03:35That's pretty sweet. A lot of creators out there have a mirrorless camera already and a smartphone
03:40So combining these two to have a nicer display makes a lot of sense
03:43But then number two the special 5g workflow pieces built-in will let you do crazy things
03:49It'll let you live stream with this 4k full-frame quality to sites like Twitch and YouTube
03:56And with services like stream yard stream labs, which is sick
03:59It's the awesome freeing feeling of not being tied to your computer anymore and still getting live full-frame quality
04:07That's so cool
04:09and if you're feeling adventurous
04:10You can even add USB C from the phone to the camera too and this phone's 4,000 milliamp hour battery
04:16Will act as a power bank for the camera extending its battery life and that also enables FTP transfer
04:23So if you're live blogging like taking a bunch of high-resolution photos
04:27Those photos go straight to the phone and then can be sent straight to the truck or straight online
04:33From the 5g of the phone itself, so that's all sweet and pretty unheard of but at the same time
04:39This is like I said a little bit inelegant
04:41You do need a cage to attach anything like this to the a7 s3
04:46So I've used the a7s and so now you have a hot shoe mount that connects to the phone
04:50I happen to use a hot shoe microphone. So I've had to put the mount on the side the weight distributions a little bit off
04:57But it's not horrible
04:59There's a lot of screws and mounts involved to moving things around to put it on the side
05:03Took a few minutes to set up and get just right, but we got it done
05:06But then once it's set up the HDMI output renders the touchscreen on the camera itself
05:12Useless since it's off and it only outputs one at a time. So since there's no touch controls transferred by HDMI
05:19You do get menu control through the buttons still and you can see all that stuff
05:22But there's no touch to select and you lose touch to focus for photos and videos
05:27The one thing you do get is the ability to zoom in on the actual literal HDMI feed and use it as a focus assist
05:34but that's nowhere near as powerful as
05:36Focus peaking or false color which are built into some more pro monitors
05:41And then it just kind of feels off that the HDMI feed doesn't even take up the whole display on the phone
05:46Like it's it's a 21 by 9 display still and unless they're shooting 21 by 9 video
05:51It's just gonna feel like there's a lot of wasted space that you can't use for other things
05:55So this phone simultaneously became the most comprehensive
06:01Professional durable
06:03pro tool I've ever seen as a phone and
06:07The most niche phone of all time. So that $2,500 price
06:12Seems wildly high because when you look at it as a phone with a few cool tricks up its sleeve
06:19that is crazy high most phones are a
06:22$1,000 at the high end 12 to 1500 and if you do something really crazy like fold in half
06:27Maybe you can justify being two grand
06:29so that looks really expensive but if
06:32You're a professional or a creator or you're in this world already and you've ever shopped for an external monitor for your mirrorless camera
06:39Then you know how hard it is to find a 4k
06:43OLED viewfinder that's this thin
06:47That has an all-day battery life that can charge your camera that has 5g built-in and
06:54Has custom software for transcoding and uploading huge video files and photos straight to the Internet. So
07:012,500 bucks seems like a deal and that's really just because it's such a technical rarity really nothing else does that
07:07It's already just hard to find a good OLED viewfinder
07:11Most of those aren't 4k
07:13Most of those have a battery life of about half an hour tops and then none of those have 5g built-in
07:19So when you make something that no one else makes
07:22Who's to say it's overpriced there is no equivalent to compare it to I just looked on small HD site
07:27One of their nicest monitors is this 7 inch HDR on-camera monitor
07:31But it's not 4k and it's not OLED and it's $3,000
07:36So this phone earns the pro name more than any other phone out there no doubt about that
07:42but the sad thing is I like as a professional myself, even I am NOT in the
07:48Extremely narrow target demographic for a setup like this. Like I would rather take that small HD monitor
07:54That's a little brighter and has that little bit of a larger viewing area and those professional tools like waveforms and false color
08:01Over the 5g that this has so my theory my take is
08:06There's about 30 people in the target demographic for this phone and they all work in
08:11NFL stadiums as those photographers down on the field videographers
08:16Who need this whole setup and they're sending live video and live photos right up to the truck and to the broadcast and they need
08:23That type of speed
08:25Immediately from their viewfinder those people should get a Sony Xperia Pro
08:29But for pretty much everyone else the screen isn't quite bright or big enough
08:35the app is a little bit too buggy the compatibility is a little too rough and
08:39This just probably isn't what you need no matter what the price is and even framing it as a smartphone with extra cool features
08:46Probably won't help that this ultimately falls
08:49Perfectly into the thesis of my original Sony video about why people don't buy their phones
08:54Which is that they make things that are really technically impressive and that no one else is actually doing in a lot of ways
09:01It's just the target demographic is so small that they're not gonna sell a ton of these
09:06So I would say definitely check out that video
09:07It'll be the first link below like button if you want to watch it
09:10Sheds a little more light on the more specifics of the last gen of this phone and there are parts shared in this one
09:16But that explains the whole theory in more detail, too. It's just I don't know as a professional
09:21I like seeing stuff made for professionals, but I just think the packaging of it as a smartphone is a little bit odd either way
09:29That's pretty much it for me. Thanks for watching. Let me know what you think and I'll catch you guys in the next video
09:35peace