Plenty of modern smartphones have telephoto cameras that let you get closer to the action. But most have a fixed focal length, which means that you have only a few choices for zoom level before you start relying on digital zoom.

The new Sony Xperia 1 IV is different. One of the three cameras on the back of the phone has a “true optical zoom lens” with the ability to smoothly transition from an 85mm equivalent lens to 125mm or anything in between. The new phone is the latest in a line of models from Sony that put camera features at the forefront… and which carry hefty price tags. The Sony Xperia 1 IV is up for pre-order now for $1600 and it’s expected to begin shipping in September.

The telephoto camera is certainly the phone’s most distinctive characteristic, offering support for 3.5X to 5X optical zoom levels without any digital artifacts. But it’s just one of the phone’s three rear cameras, which include:

  • 12MP primary camera with 1/1.7″ image sensor, 24mm focal length, and OIS
  • 12MP ultra-wide camera with 1/2.5″ image sensor and 16mm focal length
  • 12MP telephoto camera with 1/3.5″ image sensor, 85mm – 125mm focal length, and OIS

Sony says all of the cameras support 4K video capture at up to 120 frames per second, up to 5X slow-motion video recording, and burst photography with support for capturing up to 20 HDR photos per second.

Other features for the Sony Xperia 1 IV include a 6.5 inch, 3840 x 1644 pixel OLED display with a 120 Hz refresh rate and 240 Hz touch sampling rate, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, 12GB of RAM, 512GB of UFS storage, and support for microSDXC cards up to 1TB.

The smartphone has a USB 3.2 Type-C port, support for WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 and NFC, and 5G with dual SIM support.

Sony’s latest flagship has a 5,000 mAh battery and support for Qi wireless charging, a fingerprint sensor, and IP65/68 water and dust resistance

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3 replies on “Sony Xperia 1 IV smartphone has an optical zoom camera with 85-125mm continuous zoom”

  1. Other than the price and size (it’s a full inch taller than anything I’d actually buy), the features are about perfect. Decent variable zoom, dedicated shutter button, removable storage, headphone jack and actually looks nice and reflective of a premium product. A lot of the things I now miss after switching away from an Xperia handset.

    But yeah, pricing aside, I simply won’t buy a phone that can’t fit in the front pocket of a regular dude-size pair of pants.

  2. You know, given that it’s the price of a cheap DSLR AND a basically okay laptop, I really kinda expect it to be able to handle the responsibilities of both basically okay as well. Like, they oughta put some effort into debugging Android’s desktop mode and offer a sub-$400 lapdock with it. Otherwise, it’s like Sony saying “what do you mean, $2000 smartphones aren’t the norm? That’s $1000 in 2019 dollars.”
    I mean I WANT to like it, because you just don’t see other phones without a notch or round corners or headphone jacks anymore, and the reason you see that EVERYWHERE is marketing departments taking data from the iPhone buyers (who will buy any phone apple makes due to network effects, social status, and baby duck syndrome) and doing a lot of specious reasoning on it.

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