staff@slashgear.com (Max Miller)
2024-04-19 10:30:39
www.slashgear.com
Would you pay $2,500 for a smartphone? Sony wagered someone would when it launched the Xperia PRO, a phone meant for professional photographers. As one of the leading manufacturers of camera equipment, Sony knew that people who had already dropped up to $6,000 on a high-end camera wouldn’t balk too much at another couple grand for a phone that worked as a camera accessory.
The phone itself has a relatively normal camera by Sony standards, or even by modern smartphone standards. It’s a triple camera array, each of which is a 12MP Sony sensor behind a Zeiss lens. But the Xperia PRO wasn’t designed with its built-in cameras in mind. As professional photographer Darren Carroll explained in a promotional video for the phone, he can connect the Xperia PRO to his Sony Alpha 7S III with a tethered USB-C connection and HDMI. While he takes pictures, the phone transmits them to the cloud. He also demonstrates using the phone as a secondary monitor that can be positioned on a separate tripod. In the same video, a couple who run a YouTube channel demonstrate connecting the Xperia PRO to a Sony video camera for high-quality live streaming.
Unless your full-time job is photography, you’re probably not the target market for the Xperia PRO, and even then, it works best with Sony’s own cameras. Nonetheless, it’s sold out on Sony’s website at time of writing. Apparently, Sony knows who its customers are.