Sony Xperia 5 II: Compact high-end smartphone with 120Hz
from Fabian Menzel 
on September 20, 2020, 13:51 | Write a comment
Sony remains true to its line and presents another compact high-end smartphone with the new Sony Xperia 5 II. You hardly have to compromise on the bigger brother, the Sony Xperia 1 II. The smartphone comes with a 120Hz display, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 and much more. What else the compact high-end smartphone has to offer and how much it costs, let's take a look at this article.
The highlight of the Sony Xperia 5 II is clearly the size. At just 15,8 cm in length and 6,8 cm in width, the Xperia 5 II is definitely one of the more compact smartphones these days. This sentence would have been unthinkable a few years ago, because in the past, smartphones with such dimensions would have been called large, but for today's standards they are guaranteed to be among the smaller devices. The bigger one Xperia 1 II for comparison measures 16,6 cm in length and 7,2 cm in width.
The new, handy smartphone is also in a league of its own when it comes to weight. It weighs only 163 grams and is therefore significantly lighter than the high-end smartphones from Samsung, Apple, Huawei and Co. A Huawei P40 or iPhone 11 Pro weigh more, despite the smaller battery.
So if you're looking for a compact, lightweight high-end smartphone, you've come to the right place.
Image: Sony
Technical data
The technical data hardly differs from the larger Xperia 1 II.
Sony installed a 6,1-inch OLED display in 21: 9 format. The Xperia 5 II is the first Sony smartphone with a refresh rate of 120Hz. This was still missing from the Xperia 1 II and was also one of the biggest criticisms of the smartphone. For this you have to make slight cuts in the resolution. While the Xperia 1 II has a razor-sharp resolution of 3.840 x 1.644 pixels, the Xperia 5 II only manages a solid 2.520 x 1.080 pixels. You have to decide for yourself whether the resolution or the refresh rate is more important. This is also one of the biggest differences between these smartphones.
The software used is of course Android, with Sony's in-house user interface. Android 10 is still running ex-factory, but an update to Android 11 will come soon.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 is working under the hood, so 5G is also possible, which, however, does not yet play a major role in Germany. There is also 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal memory that can be expanded via a microSD card.
Compared to its predecessor, the Xperia 5, received a major upgrade. It is a proud 4000mAh in size and thus significantly larger than the 3140 mAh in the Xperia 5. With the included 21W power supply, the smartphone should charge up to 50 in about half an hour Procent loaded. Unlike the Xperia 1 II, wireless charging is unfortunately not supported.
With the cameras, we see a familiar image from Sony. They install 3 sensors, each with a resolution of 12 megapixels: a wide-angle camera, an ultra-wide-angle camera and, last but not least, a telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom. Except for the missing TOF sensor, this is the identical camera setup of the Xperia 1 II. In addition, 4K slow motion videos can be recorded with 120 FPS. The front camera has a resolution of 8 megapixels.
The triple camera of the Sony Xperia 5 II (Image: Sony)
Other
The Sony Xperia 5 II offers a few additional functions: It is IP68 protected against the ingress of water and dust, it is dual SIM capable and it is equipped with an additional button for the Google Assistant. It is also one of the few high-end smartphones that still has a jack connection.
Sony Xperia 5 II: price, availability and colors
The smartphone will be available in 3 different colors: blue, gray and black. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the version with 128 GB of flash memory and 8 GB of RAM is expected to hit the market for 899 euros.
