Sony as usual continues on its own path of releasing its ultra-niche professional camera smartphone using the Xperia branding.

The new Xperia Pro-I is the company’s newest product expected to hit the market by December of this year.

Being labeled a “Pro” smartphone isn’t just about slapping a name on a premium smartphone but also offering those extremely professional features on a premium-tier smartphone.

Sony is utilizing a 1.0-inch camera sensor on this device to enhance the device’s phase-detect autofocus capability as well as a ton of interesting features that makes the device fascinating.

There is a lot to talk about when it comes to the new Xperia Pro-I especially with the camera sensor but also the camera software bundled with the device gives you the look and feel of a professional digital camera as it allows you to take 100% control of the camera.

Still on the camera of the Xperia Pro-I, the primary sensor of this device is about 20% bigger than the one found on other premium-tier flagship devices like the iPhone 13 Pro Max and even the Galaxy S21 Ultra.

The only smartphone sensor that matches up with this is the one found on the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra with its 2.8µm pixels.

In front of that Exmor RS sensor sits a Zeiss-coated, stabilized 24mm lens with a variable aperture that goes from f/2.0 for the shallowest depth of field to f/4.0 when utmost sharpness is the goal.

The other sensors on this device include another 12MP 16mm f/2.2 aperture ultrawide-angle sensor that can also serve as a 50mm f/2.4 2x telephoto camera.

The inclusion of a periscope lens would have been a really awesome addition that can further enhance the zoom’s capability but this is probably what the final product will be.

The camera is able to pick up both animal and human faces as well as allow for better autofocus in order to keep the subject in the frame.

In fact, the camera is able to lock up to a subject thanks to 315 phase-detect AF points across 90% of the frame.

The Bionz X image signal processor, found in the Xperia 1 III and 5 III is in charge of handling the Xperia Pro-I video and photo processing.

Another professional-grade addition to this device is the inclusion of two physical buttons that can be configured for whatever action you’d like them for.

The device comes bundled with a professional application to set up things like white balance, exposure, and focus manually or automatically depending on your level of proficiency in the game.

Other things you’re able to do include shooting 4K videos at 120FPS for a 5X slow motion.

But to spice things up, Sony added a number of cool accessories with this device which are probably sold separately – a 3.5-inch display that can be latched on the back of the device and a stick to hold the device like a gimbal stick which has a number of buttons to control the output of the camera without having to interact directly with the display.

Elsewhere, the Sony Xperia Pro-I comes with a nice 6.5-inch 4K OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and 1B colors.

It’s powered by the current high-end Snapdragon 888 chipset with 12GB of RAM. Storage will reportedly reach about 512GB while there will be an option for an external microSD card to crank up the storage.

As for the power, it’ll come with a 4,500mAh battery and will have a 30W power brick out of the box as well as a USB-C cable.

Also, it surprisingly retains the 3.5mm headphone jack.

However, you shouldn’t expect all these features to come at a cheap price point.

The Xperia Pro-I will go on sale by December according to official reports in European countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Nordics with a whopping EU€1,799.

The Vlog monitor will cost about €199 and the attachment cover to hold the monitor with your smartphone will cost about €89.99.

This is a pretty expensive device and as I mentioned earlier, it’s not meant for everyone especially with the expensive accessories that further compliments the features and capabilities of the device in every way possible.