Sony Xperia 5 V review: Compact premium smartphone with professional camera
Sony Xperia 5 V review: Compact premium smartphone with professional camera
The Sony Xperia 5 V is a 6.1-inch smartphone with Android 13 that is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and its Adreno 740 GPU. It also comes with 128 GB of internal storage and 8 GB of RAM. Other features include a 2520 x 1080 pixel OLED panel with Gorilla Glass Victus 2, dual-SIM operation with ...
compact
6.1 inch
Back in my day, “compact” meant “usable with one hand”, or sub-5”.
True, but on the other hand, phone screens used to be 16:9 and have larger borders around them. A 21:9 6" phone of today is roughly the same physical size as a 5" phone of 5 years ago.
It's also true that phone are actually getting bigger and bigger by the year, and I don't really like that
I don't want thin bezels - thick left & right ones improve fall protection, while top & bottom ones are a resting place for fingers in landscape mode & allow for physical navigation buttons and a full rectangular screen without notches or rounded corners. Also a smaller screen inherently consumes less power at the same brightness.
5" 16:9 is 110×62 mm
6" 21:9 is 140×60 mm, not accounting for shenenigans like rounded corners that technically decrease the diagonalI prefer the former, and I'm thus using a 2017 5.2" Samsung Galaxy J5 I got for $50 and upgraded to Android 10.
This is really a pet peeve of mine, people basing screen sizes off a diagonal without taking into account the aspect ratio. Thanks for speaking up on this.
IMHO frame width matters more than anything else for one-handed use. Personally I would love to see a modern phone with flagship specs at <65mm wide but I doubt it'll ever happen again.
<70mm wide is what passes for "compact" nowadays.
Galaxy S23: 70.9mm
Pixel 7: 73.2mm
iPhone 15: 71.6
Zenfone 10: 68.1
Xperia Five-Five: 68mm
For comparison, the Xperia Z3 Compact in 2014 was 64.9mm wide. Even in 2014 it was one of the smaller phones available, and widely regarded as the best "compact" phone.
The only other phones released since 2022 that are compatible with my network and under 68mm wide are the iPhone SE and the Xperia Five-Four.
At this point I don't know what I'll get for my next phone. I might just give up on one-handed use and get the biggest slab that can still fit in my pockets.
Comparing it based on screen size is silly IMO.
You'd think based on screen size that this phone would be way larger than older phones, but it isn't really. Smaller bezels have enabled much larger screens on our phones.
This phone is slightly taller and slightly less wide than a Galaxy S5 from ~10 years ago. And IMO narrower width is more important for one handed usage.
Right?
The screen is larger than my Galaxy S4 was - the entire phone.
Nope.
Xperia 5 V screen area: 86.9cm²
Galaxy S4 full frontal area: 95.9cm² (pretty much exactly 10% larger)
In terms of full dimensions (not just the Xperia's screen) the Xperia is narrower but longer than the S4.
So for stuff like typing one handed, or using better designed apps with navigation on the bottom, the one-handed experience will be better on the Xperia. Swiping down your notifications won't be.
"Professional"
I do not think it means what you think it means.For a real world awesome camera test of this phone check out this beautiful video by Olle Nilsson:
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/0DJe4MQ84po?si=8p8fMYqmcBRLxMvb
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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3 inch isn’t compact. I bet this phone drives a big car.
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