Sony Mobile Xperia XZ Premium Smartphone Unveiled

Xperia™ XZ Premium is one of those devices that has to be seen to be believed. Right out of the box it’s a striking device. Photos really don’t do justice to the the stunning metallic finishes (‘Luminous Chrome’ and ‘Deepsea Black’) and its biggest party tricks – 4K HDR and Super slow mo – are ones you have to check out for yourself.

That’s why yesterday after the conference we headed backstage at the Sony Mobile booth and joined a select few international press for a demo of the new handset.

Super slow motion

Under the hood of XZ Premium is the all-new Motion Eye™ camera system.  A memory stacked Exmor™ RS sensor boasts technologies usually only found on high end compact cameras and delivers five times faster image scanning and data transfer. That means XZ Premium can handle Super slow mo of 960fps, around 4 x slower than we’re used to seeing in smartphones.

To showcase just how slow XZ Premium can go we were directed to a water tank filled with neon balls (bear with us this will make sense shortly…). A whirlpool was activated whipping the balls into a frenzy as they spun around the tank, giving us something to capture in Super slow mo. Audible gasps were heard as the room watched their footage back. At 960fps the frantic scene became oddly serene as the balls seems to literally hang suspended in the water, showcasing a level of detail that cannot be appreciated without this kind of tech. Check out the film below to see what we mean – a seriously envy-inducing feature.

Predictive Capture

Missing the perfect shot can be pretty frustrating. You take a snap of your dog / child / friend doing something awesome but when you check it back you’ve actually missed the crucial moment. Predictive Capture is here to fix that. The camera will automatically start buffering images when motion is detected (even before you press the shutter button) offering you a selection of shots to choose from after the action has passed. This means that even though you might have missed the perfect moment, the camera didn’t.

This was shown to us by – how else – firing a toy clown out of a miniature cannon. Tasked with capturing the clown mid-flight we all (naturally) missed the crucial moment but of the four images Predictive Capture served up afterwards one was indeed the perfect shot.

4K HDR

You know what HDR is by now. Hyper Dynamic Range means more colour, contrast, and brightness. Like Super slow mo it has to be seen in real life. We were shown XZ Premium (4K HDR) next to the still very impressive Z5 Premium (4K). The difference was marked. Colours on the XZ Premium really ‘popped’, the sky was brighter, shadows were deeper black, and the detail level – even on a 5.5” screen – made viewing an immersive experience.

Take a look at a few snaps from our session below. Our advice would be to check XZ Premium out for yourself as soon as possible.