Sony Xperia 5 II brings performance power in a compact body

Following a range of mark II updates, it's now the turn of the Xperia 5 to get its update. Refreshing the 2019 model, the Xperia 5 II looks to offer power from within its compact body.

The spec of the Xperia 5 II in many ways mirror those of the flagship Xperia 1 II, so this is a flagship-grade Snapdragon 865 5G handset. But looking to boost its standing, Sony has clarified the position of its display, moving on from the "motion blur reduction" option of the Xperia 1 II to offer a bone fide 120Hz display.

It's a 6.1-inch phone that sticks to 1080p resolution on its 21:9 OLED panel, but Sony now says that its motion blur reduction technology can simulate 240Hz instead, for super-clear fast moving objects. It's now paired with a 240Hz touch sampling panel, which Sony says has been tuned so that it's faster than its rivals.

Much of this focus on gaming comes down to the fact that Sony sponsors the Call of Duty Mobile World Championship, so Xperia seems to be upping its gaming chops. With that in mind, the Xperia 5 II's game enhancer can to set to optimise everything for gaming, reducing all distractions and even making it so you can't accidentally swipe out of the game by disabling the phone's usual navigation gestures.

Stereo speakers - something that Sony has always been good at - along with a 3.5mm headphone socket will ensure that the phone sounds good, while the USB-C port has been configured so that you can bypass battery charging and use it wired for long gaming sessions, without damaging the battery. To help with heat dispersion there's a graphene mat inside, while a 4000mAh battery powers the phone.

There's a plethora of buttons down the right-hand side of the device, including the volume, fingerprint sensor, a Google Assistant button and a dedicated shutter button.

On the rear of the phone is a familiar arrangement of three cameras, with Sony sticking to 16, 24 and 70mm (ultra-wide, main, telephoto) and saying that these are the core lenses that any photographer would need.

Again, the focus seems to be on features that Sony Mobile is lifting from Sony's Alpha cameras and we're not certain that the company is really embracing mobile photograph quite as readily as some rivals.

All the lenses are Zeiss with the T* coating said to cut down on reflections for better quality, but once again, Sony's play here is about speed. The company says that using 12-megapixel sensors means that data read-outs are much faster than a higher resolution sensor, so focusing and processing can all be faster.

There's 20fps burst shooting for capturing that perfect moment in fast action, there's real-time eye-tracking autofocus on both people and animals, however the big new addition is 4K HDR 120fps slow motion, which should be crisp, smooth and sharp - and according to Sony, it's a world's first.

Exactly how the camera performance will hang together will hang on many things and we'll be sure to give it a thorough test once we get our hands on this new phone.

We currently don't know the price - we'd expect it to be in the £699 price range. Exact availability is still to be confirmed, but we're looking at mid-October before it hits shelves.

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