Why Don't People Buy Sony Smartphones?

[Music] hey what's up mkhd here and this this is the sony xperia one mark ii snapdragon 865 eight gigs of ram a 21x9 widescreen display triple cameras a 4 000 milliamp hour battery an all glass and aluminum frame expandable storage water resistance wireless charging android 10 a high quality haptic motor fingerprint reader and the power button a revolutionary technology thin bezels no hole punch or notch and just a clean minimal modern form factor flagship stuff right and that's fine but you know technically anybody can build that but the thing is this phone also has a bunch of other stuff unique really useful stuff that i haven't seen in any other phone but all this stuff leads to one question which is why don't more people buy these like sony's had a roughly zero percent market share in smartphones for the past couple of years in a row and i think i have an answer but first let me show you what is actually so good about these so the biggest one for me is this display so i've mentioned this is a 21x9 aspect ratio which we've seen a bit more now you know it keeps it a bit narrower and more comfortable on the hand more reachable and i mentioned the thin bezels they're not concerned with going all the way to the edges and ending up with a notch or a hole punch or something and actually lets them keep the front facing speakers so that's awesome but this screen is also 4k so it is a six and a half inch 4k screen in your pocket which is crazy i remember the first 4k phone i ever reviewed which was back in college was also a sony phone but yeah now even in 2020 there's something wild about seeing that 2160p option on a youtube video and toggling it and legit looking about as good as any other smartphone screen i've seen also pro tip definitely go into display settings and switch to creator mode if you have this phone which will give you the most accurate color the best looking videos and photos and yeah everything just looks really good now here's something else it may seem minor but this phone has a tool-less micro sd card and sim card tray just comes out just like that now expandable storage is already awesome but to go the extra mile on a phone where people may also take a lot of photos and videos and to engineer this lever where you can pull the tray out quickly and swap cards whenever you want all while maintaining water resistance is actually super impressive this phone also keeps that headphone jack so they didn't have to do that and we all know they didn't have to do that because sony clearly already sells some of the best wireless earbuds and wireless headphones on the market but they kept that headphone jack anyway good guy sony actually speaking of headphones if you do order this phone there's a bunch of bundles floating around while they will bundle in their world-class 350 dollar mark iv headphones for free for free this phone has a lot of really nice software features too like i said it's got android 10 with sony's overlay which is actually pretty close to stock which may surprise a lot of people it's a clean launcher with the google explorer page next to the side quick google search box at the bottom not a whole lot of pre-installed apps either but some nice added stuff here the always-on display when it's enabled we'll show you the icons for your most recent apps to give you notifications and they'll actually pulse to let you know which one is your most recent notification why it's buzzing there's also easy multitasking on this tall display and it is smooth and works really well so check this out when you hit the button in the middle it brings you to a multitasker for both panels where you can switch to a different app or you can launch different app groups so two at a time or quit out of it entirely it is really well thought out one of the best multitasking uis i've used on android and i'll actually want to use this phone also has a pretty unique feature with the speakers i've talked about where it will vibrate the chassis uh to act as extra bass so it's kind of cheesy but it also is kind of cool you turn it up and it literally adds bass from the vibration motor for those lower frequencies so in songs with a bass line the phone is literally buzzing in your hand with every bass kick it's kind of wild you might want to turn it on or off depending on what you're doing but that's also not something i've really seen done on any other phone before and this phone also even has an led notification light up top which is rare these days and an extra customizable button at the bottom that can be used to launch apps or use as a shutter button for the camera and then speaking of the cameras this is another area where you'd expect maybe people would want to flock to a phone like this because think about it for as good as the best smartphone cameras are the pixel cameras the samsung cameras of the world sony makes all of the sensors for all of those cameras and then on top of that sony also happens to make their alpha line of cameras their mirrorless stuff including the a7 iii which has been pretty much universally praised as a technical masterpiece and potentially just straight-up best camera of the year for 2020. so sony sony's got camera tech and sure enough what do you see sony is in fact bringing a lot of the tech from their alpha camera line down into these cameras on the phone mainly the incredible auto focus and that's what i like the most but also a lot of manual control so first of all if you just take photos and videos in the automatic mode in the standard app like most people will you'll get a lot of good stuff there's three 12 megapixel cameras the primary the telephoto and then a truly wide ultra wide which is awesome and photos are pretty good very neutral you know very very good dynamic range colors are good sharpness is okay and focus is fast but then there's also the included pro level photo and video apps called photo pro and cinema pro photo pro basically shrinks the viewfinder and gives you full on camera modes and manual levels of control just like a sony alpha camera it's actually so much control that it requires a bit of a learning curve to get used to shooting it on an entirely touch screen interface but there's a lot of stuff here it's pretty awesome and it gives you world-class auto focus object and eye tracking your histograms your exposure compensation metering modes all of that and then the cinema pro app is even crazier to me you get wide dynamic range 4k video with profiles with adjustable manual controls iso control venice color science manual focus and even focus racking so you can set two different focus points a and b and then have the camera smoothly rack between them without hunting because yeah you're you're totally making a movie on your phone with this thing this is next level dedication to enthusiasts but i think that actually kind of partially answers the question we're considering in the first place which is why don't more people buy these why don't more people buy and flock to these awesome phones with tons of enthusiast level features and part of the answer is because enthusiasts really only make up a very very small percentage of the overall market of anything but especially of smartphones now don't get me wrong enthusiasts features do sell things sometimes but if you want that true high level volume of sales you need to appeal to everybody and these kind of don't like for all those awesome camera features i just talked about and manual controls and venice color science this phone also just straight up doesn't have a simple night mode like people want to just quickly take a great low light photo like pixel's night sight this doesn't have that the front facing camera is only 1080p 30. and we all know a growing mass of people care about the front-facing camera just as much if not more than the back ones it's also a 4k 60hz display and i bet you could hand this phone to a thousand people and not tell them it has a 4k display and ask them what they think and you'd probably never get a single person asking if it's a 4k screen and also most people who already know how to use and take the most advantage of and really like this super high end manual control on the cameras most of those people already own and use their own main mirrorless camera or something like that so don't get me wrong this is good for those people it's an added feature but this isn't a feature that's going to sell new people take a look at this chart this is sony's volume of smartphone sales for the past few years now obviously this is a concerning trend falling from nearly 40 million smartphones a year for two years in a row all the way down to just six and a half million sold in 2018 for perspective that's about as many iphones as apple sells in a week in a strong fourth quarter so to get back in the game sony needs a strong 2019 right they need to pull out a few more smartphones get a little bit more variety in there start appealing to more people really good phones like the xperia one mark ii and that should put them back on the map for oh oh that is not good at all and that's because there's one more reason that people don't buy these even though they're clearly pretty cool and they're pretty good and maybe they should and that's because they don't know about these and if you think about it that's kind of crazy that the company that makes all these popular mirrorless cameras and this technical masterpiece oh and also the playstation and all these tvs and everything that that company can't leverage anything to get over zero percent in smartphone market share and from my perspective as a reviewer it's frustrating because it seems like sony's kind of suffering from some of the same stuff lg has lately anyway which is their inability to properly launch a phone to the masses like take apple for example we talk about them a lot but they're notoriously very good at launching a phone they'll have an event then a week later you can pre-order and then a week later they're in the streets it doesn't take very long the hype doesn't die you know oneplus does this too samsung does this too the good launches go that way this phone was unveiled in may may so that's six months ago when it first started showing up and i just got it last week so may june july august september october that's a long time for the hype to die and for a very poorly thought out launch strategy and you know whether it is poorly thought out or poorly executed it just doesn't look good period and it doesn't look like a priority for your company when it takes that long matter of fact it's taken so long for this phone to come out that it's basically successor has already launched it's already been announced it's called the xperia 5 mark ii for some reason sony's terrible with names and we won't even get into that but you know that's a slightly smaller version of this with 120 hertz display and a little bit of a lower price and when i go to b h to try to get my hands on that well it's not available till december so of course people don't want to deal with that especially when you're dealing with expensive phones you don't want to have your phone arrive the day the sequel is announced and that that's actually bad for reviewers too reviewers want to know that when they review a phone they have all the most updated information and if you didn't get one in may or june when they were first getting seeded like i didn't and you get one now and the xperia 5 mark ii just came out why would i even want to review this phone anyway people aren't even going to buy it so that's the frustrating thing that's it's crazy that sony can make such a great such an interesting compelling little phone and there'd just be absolutely no desire to share it or buy it or anything but here's the thing here's the thing i'm still rooting for sony because i don't want to see this kind of stuff die let's not forget the more competition in any field the better the products get and so while that downward curve sort of makes it look like sony's mobile division is on life support and we've seen what that looks like in others before i don't want it to die for both of us either way that's been it let me know what you think in the comments below thanks for watching and i'll catch you guys in the next one peace

Channel: Marques Brownlee

Views: 7,427,087

Keywords: Sony phone, xperia, Sony xperia 1 ii, Sony xperia 5 ii, xperia 5, MKBHD, Sony Xperia 5 review, Sony Xperia 1 review

Id: j7QwJ-M_GAI

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/tummyteachalamet]

This was one of his more interesting videos in awhile, I think I prefer when he reviews less popular phones.

[u/audie-tron171]

Anyone that's been following Sony Xperia's are probably not going to be suprised about the low sales volume. They have always been premium devices and instead of lowering the spec/price, Sony simply just dropped out of markets where flagships don't sell well. Being unable to ship their devices until months after launch doesn't help either (although there's been a lot of disruption with electronics supply this year).

[u/Drinkin_Abe_Lincoln]

Great looking phone, but I'm past buying a flagship phone again. $1000 for a phone? No thanks.

[u/fishbulbx]

This one review probably sell more Xperia phones than Sony's entire marketing team.

[u/ownage516]

Sony had been known for its divisions to compete with itself. If Sony had a competent CEO and leveraged all the successful parts together, they’d be on Samsung’s heels

[u/SkollFenrirson]

Price. Sony still thinks it's 1985 when having the Sony brand warrants a 25% markup

[u/bfk1010]

I wish one day I can buy Sony & HTC phones again, but it seems they don't want to sell/exist.

High prices, not available in many countries, not good software support, the competitors sell same hardware with much cheaper prices and better support.

LG is following them. In my region it's either Apple or Samsung (used to be Huawei with them).

Good night.

[u/kenicolo]

Here in Canada they were plagued by problems. Xa1 phone had touch probleme. M4 aqua battery would inflate, and Manu more problems.

Xz2 compact was overpriced.

Our representative bullshitted us and minimized the problems and never acknowledge the troubles and never offered simple replacement for customers.

Our salesmen often refused to sell them to customer or discouraged them to buy it because of this.

[u/requium94]

They don't sell them at all in Australia?