Gadgetory

- So this is the Xperia 1. This is an iPhone 10. Look how much taller this is, it's insane. (upbeat techno music) Hey it's Chaim with The Verge, and we're here with Sony's new phones they're announcing at MWC 2019, and this year, Sony's going tall. (upbeat techno music) This is the Xperia 1 which is Sony's new flagship, and the thing that's in common across all the phones that Sony's announcing this year is that they all the 21 by 9 aspect ratio screen, which is just really really tall. The idea is that you can fit more content on your screen than you ever could before, and it's just a really interesting approach, especially when you look at basically every other flagship, which has just been like bezles and notches, it's a different approach. Sony's announcing three phones at the show this year, there's the Xperia 1, which is the flagship, and then there's the Xperia 10 and the Xperia 10 Plus. All three phones have the 21 by 9 screen. The Xperia 10 is a 6 inch phone. The Xperia 10 Plus is a 6.5 inch. And while they're not quite as impressive as the Xperia 1, the design's a little cheaper, it has a plastic back instead of glass, the specs are lower, Snapdragon 600 series processors, they're still impressive just from the sheer size of the screen. While we haven't actually been able to really play with the Xperia 1, we have been able to use the Xperia 10 Plus, and you can really fit a lot of content on here. There's really no way to get around it, this is a really tall phone. I mean, I have pretty big hands and reaching the top of the screen is still a bit of a stretch. Sony does have this cool one-handed mode where you can double-tap the home button, and it literally just shrinks the display down into a smaller functional version, so it turns your big phone into like a little mini phone living on your big phone. You can adjust how big this preview goes, so if you want it really small you can, if you got a little bit bigger hands you can make it bigger. One of the things that Sony's really pushing with this is vertical multitasking so you can have two things, not necessarily side by side but top and bottom, and the screen is so tall you can kinda just have your directions up in the top corner of the map while you say, text someone, or a YouTube video playing while you're actually doing work. (upbeat music with snapping) The Xperia 1 has a 4K OLED HDR display, which Sony says is the first for any smart phone. It's a 6.5 inch screen, and while there's no notch, again it is this giant, tall 21 by 9 display. It almost feels like you're holding a TV remote instead of a phone. In keeping that the Xperia 1 is the Sony's new flagship, Sony's been packing it with all the top specs. There's the new Snapdragon 855 processor, six gigabytes of RAM, 128 gigabytes of onboard storage, USB-C, it's water resistant. Sony's using a new triple camera on the Xperia 1, which is the first time Sony's put three cameras on one phone like this. There's a 26 millimeter wide lens, a 52 millimeter telephoto, and a 16 millimeter super wide. It's a similar approach that we've seen from other manufacturers that have had multiple cameras to offer different kinds of lenses, to get different shots, but we'll have to see how it works in practice before we make any judgements. The Xperia 1 also does have a fingerprint sensor like Sony's previous phones, it is built into the power button on the side, which other phones Sony had released up until the XZ3 didn't have, so again good to see here. There is no in-display fingerprint sensor, which we have seen on some other flagships out of MWC this year, but we'll take what we can get. Sony's really putting out all the stops. They really want this to look and feel like a flagship phone among anything else in the market. There is some weird stuff though, because a lot of content just isn't mastered for a screen this tall, so YouTube videos, some of them are going to have black bars, and while Sony says that it is working with partners like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and games like Fortnite and Asphalt Racing to make sure their content will look great on that phone, not everything might look outstanding when it does launch. There's still a lot of details about these phones that we don't know, and Sony will be releasing more at MWC and as we get closer to release. The Xperia 1 will be out sometime later this spring, the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus will be out on March 18th. Prices have yet to be announced, but they're tall, they're really tall. I can't emphasize this enough, and if you've been looking for a tall phone, this might be it.