Gadgetory

well Sony what are we gonna do with you I kind of feel bad for Sony our coverage of the Xperia line got crazy out of order but now that we're back from the excitement and the announcements over the Galaxy Note 7 we're coming back to spend a little time with the xperia x performance this year for Sony really has been an expanding conversation on the lineup of phones that we're going to be playing with we put out a full review on that sort of mid point Xperia X but we held off on a number of things that we wanted to test with their top-of-the-line device the X performance namely our real camera review and those speaker and headphone benchmarks and we've been trying to incorporate in more of our reviews along the way we're really trying to make sure we do our due diligence with this manufacturer Sony as a brand kind of walked away from the United States they kind of limping back into this area of the world with unlocked devices sold directly to consumers no carrier relationships to really make sure these things show up on store shelves as I mentioned in our first impressions video on the X performance I was really expecting a few more differences between this and the regular Xperia AX I've been using it for the last couple days and it does feel like a very similar phone there is a little extra horsepower we move from a welcome 652 to a welcome 820 so so that's nice that's progress the tiny little battery bump has been non-existent in terms of real world usage I see no benefits from that an additional runtime during the day and I was really hoping for an expanded feature set out of this camera it's a similar camera sensor but with the extra horsepower from the Qualcomm 820 I was thinking oh maybe we'll finally get UHD video we're h.265 compression or something that we would really identify with Sony as a camera manufacturer finally making its way into their phones and no it's all pretty much the same experience there to you max out at 1080p 60 frames per second for video you've got that 23 megapixel sensor but it's really designed to pump out eight megapixel downsampled images to really kind of mess with the the exposure and noise reduction in the filtering that goes into producing a nice crisp image you get great shots out of it but that doesn't feel like you're really getting everything that that experience only brand can bring to the table in the past we've been able to celebrate the fit finish of Sony devices and I just don't have that same kind of love for the Xperia X that I had for the Xperia Z line of phones that came before it I mean sure it's an attractive device I think Sony style is on point I love this sort of monolith slab of device it's very angular it's very sharp it's very precise and it is this brushed metal exterior I think it looks cool it feels nice in the hand like so many other youtubers have generically commented on a number of phones that have come out recently but I don't feel like there's that same attention to detail that we've seen on previous Sony devices there's there's a little bowing on the side panel here by the SIM card a SIM card tray mind you which ii you pull it out because there's no pin tool door you just stick a thumbnail in there the phone automatically reboots which is really frustrating if you have to swap cards back and forth I'd love to be able to hot swap a SIM card on a Sony phone but the bowing here does actually pull out with the SIM card tray that's a bit uncommon for Sony and we would expect a higher level of quality assurance in the manufacturing on a phone which is priced to go up against top-tier Android manufacturers from around the world and just generally with my tiny little Hobbit hands I do like going back to a 5-inch screen but the way that the borders and corners and angles are sort of shaped on this phone it doesn't really feel any smaller in the hand than when I'm trying to go one-handed with a galaxy s7 for example I think I have about the same quality of reach even with my little stumpy thumb here that's ultimately where I end up in something of a gadget fan quandary like I really want to like this phone I really want to like what Sony brings to the table especially the success they've had with the PlayStation brand there their line of mirrorless cameras is phenomenal and I think they are putting out some really attractive phones but phones that are struggling to compete with the other devices out there in the ecosystem especially at the price points at Sony's commanding with every device we want to find that one unique hook that the manufacturer can supply that they can do better than anybody else and you would think it would be camera tech that every phone out there has a Sony sensor in it and Sony's own products don't seem to benefit from that manufacturing prowess but that leaves me with a question for you out there in the audience now normally for a real camera review we shoot at the highest possible video quality from the phone and then try and mix that up with a you HD or 4k quality video that gets blasted out to YouTube so this phone maxes out at 1080p at 60 frames per second so I'm throwing it out there to the audience and how we should wrap up the real camera review for the Sony Xperia X performance should we shoot 1080p at 60 frames per second and put up a video at 1080p 60 frames per second or should we maybe scale that back to 1080p at 30 frames per second knowing that the video quality is probably not going to be radically different there and then upload a UHD quality video so that you can see better the photo quality coming from these eight megapixel downsampled images off of the 23 megapixel camera sensor I have a little viewer poll that just slid out on the top of this video voting that I'm going to look over the next couple days see what you guys say and that's how we'll finish up the real camera review for the Sony Xperia X performance we'll have more to report on the Xperia X performance soon so be on the lookout for that we've got some comparisons that are going to come out alongside the full review and the real camera review as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for more fun tech diary video entries like these we're trying to mix it up a little have a little fun with how we talk about our gadget feelings pocket now I'm Juan Carlos bag now you can catch me on Twitter and Instagram has some gadget guy and I will catch you all on the next video you