if you've been subscribed to BTEKT for
a while you're probably thinking
who the hell is this guy and why is he
on a roof
if you're not subscribed to BTEKT
you're probably thinking who the hell is
this guy and why is he on a roof
well i have a story to tell you but in
the meantime
here's the Sony Xperia 1 II and
this is my first ever
rooftop review here in the heart of
latin america
so here's the kind of backstory before
we get into this amazing phone
i came to latin america to start a
business
and i got here started recruiting
just as covid hit this beautiful
beautiful place
and i've been in lockdown ever since the
whole team is in isolation
and i think we've been in lockdown for
about 130 maybe 135 days i sort of lost
count
we're not really allowed to do too much
which is why i'm on a roof
and if you're anywhere in the world
that's been in lockdown
and you've had a tough time i'd love to
hear about it and tell me also if you've
been in lockdown
for longer than 130 days i think this
could be a record
anyway lockdown would have been
absolutely unbearable
if i didn't have this fantastic phone
and that's what i'm going to tell you
about now
this is essentially my one month later
review on the sony xperia 1 mark
ii welcome to our first ever rooftop
review
so i want to say thank you to sony
who've loaned me this phone everything i
say is my opinion
uh you know we can't be bought this is
all very honest genuine stuff
um so look this is a bit of a strange
one to review because
it's an incredibly expensive phone and
it's a very unusual phone
but living with it has really thrown up
some very pleasant surprises which i
don't feel have been
addressed in some of the other reviews
i've seen so this is a longer term
review first of all let's start off
talking about this design because this
is
classic sony it's understated
it looks the business it's unlike
anything else because of the form factor
i really
like the 21x9 form factor it's grown on
me enormously over the past month
but it is a strange one for example when
it comes to taking pictures
we did put it up against let me think
the huawei
p40 pro the iphones we put it up against
the samsung galaxy s20 ultra in fact
that's going to be the next video make
sure you're subbed
for that and and if this whole thing
about being on a rooftop doing reviews
isn't the weirdest thing if it's not too
weird please do hit that like button i'd
really appreciate it
anyway back to the cameras um when we
put it up against these other
uh phones we felt that in auto mode we
weren't quite getting
absolutely incredible results they were
very very close to being the best in the
world but not quite
but when we put it into the pro modes
whether it was video or photography
it really surprised us and became a lot
of fun
and i think that's how i look at this
phone but anyway what do i love about
the design
headphone jack now talk about courage
that for me is very courageous
i like the fact i don't need one of
those sim ejector tools every time i
need to swap out the sim
in terms of fingerprint magnets this is
the
worst offending phone i think we have in
the uh i was going to say in the studio
we're not allowed in the studio that's
another reason why i'm up here
um and i do have vertigo anyway
uh over on the front we have a selfie
camera which we're gonna get into in a
little bit it's not great
we also have an led notification light
that is great and i
absolutely love it i wish more phones
had that we've got this fantastic
display very very good stereo speakers
um in terms of quality they're not the
loudest they are loud enough
but certainly the s20 ultra was louder
um but these have a more refined sound
to them i feel
at the beginning of my time with the
xperia one mark ii when i was watching
movies i loved it when i switched back
to youtube videos
i wasn't really into it as much of
course because of the letterboxing
but then i realized actually if you go
full screen
nine times out of ten not only do you
get away with it but actually the width
that
that experience it's just worth doing so
i wouldn't
let this form factor put you off even if
you're
way more into youtube videos than you're
into watching movies
so it's easily manageable because it's
only 181 grams despite the
you know the big dimensions here it's
also very
easy to use one-handed because of course
one-handed mode
is there and it's amazingly good so too
is side sense
and if any reviewer tells you that it
doesn't work enough or
you know it isn't any good they didn't
take the time to get into the settings
because if you do
you can dial this thing in perfectly it
works for me
100 of the time so let's talk about this
display
4k i mean it is absolutely beautiful
out here in latin america using the
phone outside i did find it could do
with being a little bit brighter but it
was
good enough to get me through no problem
i mean and let's be honest it doesn't
really get any brighter than this
and it's a beautiful display the big
thing with this phone
is whether or not it would have been
better to have the higher refresh rate
because of course this is down at 60
it's not up at the dusty end like some
other phones
it doesn't worry me too much but would i
be in favor of dropping the 4k
resolution down a bit and having the
higher refresh rate having played with
the s20 ultra i can say i
would prefer that trade-off now let's
get into the camera tech
and let's kind of work our way up here
starting from
the bottom because the selfie camera
was disappointing it just wasn't really
working very well for us i'm not a
selfie
person at all really under any
circumstances
but fortunately our studio manager tati
had a little go for us on the selfie
camera i'm gonna put the uh
the results up on the screen here if we
move the uh
the sony one over to the left you will
see some of the competition
on the right will just keep changing
through them here let me know what you
think i mean the pixel i just love the
selfie camera on the pixel it's
just great isn't it um but let me know
your thoughts in which
looks kind of most natural or most
impressive there's going to be a whole
separate photography special
on this phone so we're gonna get into
more detail but this should keep us
going in the meantime
um over on the back things really do get
interesting of course we've got the
zeiss branding that beautiful lens
coating to keep
everything looking smooth um 12
megapixels across the board
timer flight sensor i mean this is
impressive looking stuff
the hardware is fantastic absolutely no
problem with the hardware at all
and i like the decision to go with 12
megapixels instead of banging it up to
108 and getting crazy there
but again let's put some results on the
screen so you can just go through them
with us here
i feel like these are all auto mode by
the way
um the huawei is impressive everything's
impressive
the iphone 11 is very good as well um
where the sony struggles is when we get
into high contrast scenarios i mean
that's when it
really it you you can tell it's kind of
beginning to lose the plot
at that point now if you get into pro
mode you can deal with that
and it's actually a lot of fun but
here's the thing
this whole shtick about this is for
professionals and all the rest of it i
mean that's a great story and i think a
professional photographer is going to
get a kick out of using this
but a professional photographer is going
to have
a fully pro camera setup and they're
probably
not going to be trying to use their
phone as they would
be using their sony you know a7 dslr
whatever
you know their piece of kit is so um
that one for me is a little bit strange
it is a little bit of a worry
that you can go out with a pixel and get
an instant
shot which is virtually as good as this
whereas to compete you do need a tripod
you do need to get into pro mode with
this thing
so who's going to actually enjoy the
photography
aspect of this phone i would say number
one it has to be a sony fan
because um this is very very sony in
terms of user experience when you get
into promo
the other thing of course is it's going
to have to be someone who is willing
more than willing someone who really
wants to use pro mode
a lot of the time and i say that because
the auto mode just doesn't quite
cut it it could do with a future
software update
but at the moment it's not quite there
it's very close but not quite there
now one thing i find with a lot of tech
reviews is they move
so fast onto the next phone that there's
no time to really kind of deal with the
whole
you know is this the right phone for me
should i buy it
am i crazy to buy this well let's take a
proper look at whether or not you should
buy this phone
i think if you are a big sony fan i mean
a
really big sony fan sony knew that this
was going to be
a niche product they're not trying to
take on the iphone
here they're trying to do something
which is a
celebration of what sony does best and
this is for the fans
if you are a sony fan you're going to
get a huge kick out of using it
if you want to use the pro mode and use
it a lot
again you'll get a huge kick out of that
in terms of living with the phone day to
day because it's basically stock android
with just a little sprinkling of sony
magic
you're going to love that as well i
think you'll enjoy the form factor the
resolution
it's super powerful um it's a great
phone
but it's 1 200
now if you get this phone with the three
earphones that i can never remember the
name of
let's put that on the screen somewhere
um
then it makes a lot more sense however
um
if you don't and you're paying a full
1200 upfront yeah that's when you need
to be a sony fan
compared with the iphone 11 pro
11 pro max even it can be cheaper
although you won't get the same storage
this don't forget it's 256 gigs of
storage and you can put in a
terabyte sd card as well so i mean there
is that let's not forget
but an iphone will hold its value better
and will get longer
uh software support i think up to five
years is about right with an iphone
this you're probably going to get two os
updates and
maybe up to three years if you're lucky
in terms of the
monthly security patches probably won't
be monthly though
i was looking over on xperia blog and i
noticed that a lot of people were saying
that
the security patches are kind of patchy
so yeah there is that i think the
biggest thing that's been missed here
uh across the board it seems is that
what you're getting with this phone
is a really really impressive big phone
experience but without the drawbacks
that we normally get with big phones
it isn't heavy despite the fact that
it's got that huge screen and a huge 4
000 milliamp hour battery
which easily gets me through every
single day with almost
30 left easily so putting all of that
together then just to kind of bring it
in to a conclusion
would i spend 1 200 1100 pounds
on this phone
do you know what i would it's a thousand
thousand two hundred dollars
that is steep it's really steep it makes
a lot more sense with the earphones
um by the way those deals do come back
occasionally make sure you follow us on
social media because um when we see that
deal
we'll um we'll give you a heads up um
that makes a lot more sense
i'm a big advocate of getting a separate
sim plan and
if you can and getting uh the handset
separately because
that way you can chop out the handset
whenever you want
hey so thank you so much for joining me
up here on our rooftop in latin america
for our first ever rooftop review
i know this is mental um obviously
but i hope that doesn't stop you from
wanting to subscribe
like this video if you liked it and be
ready for the next one because the next
one
is all about the galaxy s20 ultra i want
to thank vodafone for
shipping that out to me here i'm very
grateful for that
i've got that for a while so let's do a
review on that
and then we're going to compare that to
the xperia one mark
ii and basically everything else that we
had in the studio before covid hit
and we're going to have some fun it
isn't just where i am now we're going to
be on other rooftops in other parts of
the world so this could be really good
fun
we're going to meet some influences
we're going to take some pictures
street photography uh let's just see the
world i mean kobe's got a lot of people
down
i think it's time we had some fun
hopefully we'll see you in the next one
thank you so much for watching
you
