Last year, when the Sony Xperia 1 III and Xperia 5 III launched, the main USP of those phones was the telephoto camera because it had a “variable optical zoom” of 2.9x-4.4x. Today, Sony launched the successor to the Xperia 5 III, the Xperia 5 IV. The Sony Xperia 5 IV is a flagship phone with some notable upgrades over last year, but the company dropped the “variable optical zoom” feature from this phone. This is quite interesting because that feature was the main USP of last year’s Xperia flagships.

Design-wise, there is no noticeable difference from last year. It is still the same tall phone with a 21:9 display on the front, top, and bottom bezels, a vertical triple camera setup on the rear, and a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. The phone also has a 3.5mm headphone jack, and that is not a surprise since Sony is the only brand out there that is still keeping the headphone jack on its premium phones. There are stereo speakers, a compact form factor, and a new beveled edge design.

The phone is IP68 certified and has Gorilla Glass Victus on the front and back.

Speaking of the features, Sony Xperia 5 IV has a 6.1-inch 21:9 HDR OLED panel with a Full-HD+ resolution and up to 120Hz refresh rate. While it may sound like the same panel as on the Xperia 5 III, Sony says the display brightness is up to 50% more than the previous generation. Under the hood, it has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SOC, so while Sony did not go for the latest chip, the performance did get an upgrade over the Snapdragon 888 of the last year’s model.

The triple camera setup includes a 1/1.7″ 12MP sensor with OIS, a 1/2.5″ 12MP sensor with an ultrawide lens, and a 1/3.5″ 12MP sensor with a telephoto lens offering 2.5x optical zoom. The telephoto lens has OIS too. Sony phones are packed with camera features, and this phone is no exception. It has ZEISS optics, ZEISS T* coating, 120fps read-out speed, real-time eye-AF, Hybrid Zoom 7.5x, AI Super Resolution Zoom, and more. For selfies, there is yet another 12MP sensor on the front.

The battery size is 5,000mAh which is bigger than the 4,500mAh cell of the Xperia 5 III. Sony also added wireless charging support to this phone, which is the first for any phone under Xperia 5 series. The phone can also reverse charge any other device that supports wireless charging.

Sony Xperia 5 IV comes in three colors – Black, Green, and White. There is 8GB RAM + 128GB ROM and the price is $999 / £949 / €1,049.

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