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The Sony Xperia Pro. Why does it cost $ 2,500?
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Is this the reason why? Under that tab is a Micro HDMI port and, hopefully, several $ 100 bills.
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With the HDMI port, you can use your $ 2,500 smartphone as a camera monitor. You can also do this with a regular phone for around $ 20.
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The side has many buttons. After the volume button, there is a shutter button and two application shortcut buttons.
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There is a MicroSD slot under this tab.
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We’ve seen smartphones with stratospheric prices before, but there’s usually something special about them. Phones like the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X cost between $ 2,000 and $ 2,600, but they were first-generation foldable smartphones with entirely new screen technology. Sony’s latest entry into the smartphone market, the Sony Xperia Pro, is a boring old phone that looks totally forgettable until you look at the price: an astonishing $ 2,500, or the price of three new Samsung Galaxy S21 at $ 800. Sony really outdid itself.
Especially the Xperia Pro looks a lot like the Xperia 1 II, Sony’s flagship smartphone already overvalued by $ 1,300 in 2020. Both have 6.5-inch, almost 4K, 3840 × 1644, 60Hz OLED screens, the Snapdragon 865 SoC, three rear cameras, an IP65 rating and a 4000mAh battery. This year’s Xperia Pro reaches 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage, but that is usually worth an extra $ 100. There is also mmWave 5G this year, two “app shortcut” buttons on the side and a shutter button. Chic.
None of this explains why this phone is finally $ 1,000 more than it should. Sony’s justification for the exorbitant price is (drumroll, please) an HDMI port. Yes, in addition to the USB-C port on the bottom, there is also a Micro HDMI port that can be used as a video input. Sony suggests connecting the phone to a Sony Alpha camera and using it as a live video monitor or sending an external video source to the Internet for live streaming. This feature alone and the proximity of the camera are worth $ 1,000 more for Sony’s logic.
There have been other Android phones with HDMI before. The Motorola Atrix comes to mind, a $ 480 phone launched in 2011. That was micro HDMI resulthowever, and it could connect to a special TV or laptop. Sony is calling it “the world’s first smartphone with HDMI input”, allowing the phone to function as a mini TV.
If the idea of an Android phone plugged into your camera appeals to you, you can basically create the same setup as the Sony example at home, using a $ 20 dongle. Android phones come standard with USB support, and current tiny HDMI capture dongles mean you use an Android phone as a video monitor or livestreamer with relative ease.
An upcycling configuration with an adapter seems more appropriate for such an idea, rather than running out and buying a multi-thousand dollar custom Android phone. If you’re really willing to spend thousands of dollars on a camera monitor, you’ll probably want one with a removable battery, since a smartphone’s permanent battery will run out in a few years. A custom-made monitor will also be cheaper, have more inputs, have a larger screen and have a sun shade. If you really need a phone, you probably don’t want it to be connected to the camera all the time.
Also, as an Android phone, the Xperia Pro doesn’t look very good. It has last year’s SoC, the Snapdragon 865, instead of the Snapdragon 888, an unforgivable problem when you charge $ 2,500. Last year’s Xperia 1 II has a side-mounted fingerprint reader, but it doesn’t, and there is no biometric data of any kind listed on the website. The proximity to the phone’s camera also apparently led Sony to give it an ugly design, with a thicker body and thicker bezels on the Xperia 1 II. But the battery is not bigger and the phone does not look more robust.
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