Sony Xperia 5 review

Second Xperia with a triple cam

Following in the footsteps of the Xperia 1, the 5 is the second Xperia with a triple camera, and it's the exact same setup as on the bigger model. That means a fairly typical ensamble of an ultra wide angle module, a regular wide angle (main) camera, and a short telephoto offering 2x zoom when counting from the main cam.

Here's a quick refresher on the key specs of the three modules.

• Main: 12MP (1/2.6"), f/1.6, 26mm lens, dual-pixel PDAF, OIS
• Telephoto: 12MP (1/3.4"), f/2.4, 52mm lens (2x zoom), PDAF, OIS
• Ultra-wide: 12MP (1/3.4"), f/2.4, 16mm lens, fixed-focus

The Xperia 5 comes with Sony's Eye AF, borrowed from the company's mirrorless camera branch. It's an intelligent focusing system that can fix itself on a subject's eye and provide impressively accurate tracking. Not only it is smart enough to easily tell the distance the person in question is at, but it can also remember a particular eye. So that even if more people come into the frame or said person moves out of the frame and then returns back in, the eye-tracking and focus, that goes along with it remain unfazed.

Between the 1 and the 5, Sony has improved the autofocus further and the Xperia 5's Eye AF now works at the full 30fps as the Eye tracking. Previously, the Xperia 1 could track the eye at 30fps, but would only refocus at 15fps, and now that's been addressed on the 5. The 1 will be updated to match the 5 in this respect.

The camera app of the Xperia 5 is the same as on the 1. One of the main beefs we have with it is that switching between the three cameras happens with a button which cycles through them so you don't have direct access to each - to get to the ultra wide from the main one, you need to go through the telephoto. And then there's the matter that going to the ultra wide takes much longer than usual - it's as if takes time to power on.

You have dedicated viewfinders for stills and video, and extra modes behind a mode button. In the stills mode viewfinder, you have settings for flash, self-timer, aspect, basic white balance, and exposure compensation. There's also a toggle to switch between front and rear cameras, but you can do that more easily with a swipe on the screen.

As all other Xperias, the 5 has a hardware shutter release button and consequently a correct-side-up - the UI doesn't rotate accordingly if you tilt the phone to landscape to the right instead of to the left. We sort of get the reasoning, but still think it's backwards thinking - it isn't hurting anyone to have the UI aligned properly if the button ends up on the bottom every once in a while.

Auto mode detects the scenes and adjusts parameters accordingly, and it even takes into consideration whether the phone is stable enough to invoke longer shutter speeds. Mind you, its 'Backlit' scene mode for handling high-contrast scenes isn't quite as HDR-y as the HDR on toggle in Manual mode, which is much better for such scenarios. The problem is, you can only shoot with the main camera in Manual mode, so there's no proper full-on HDR for the telephoto and ultra wide cameras.

Speaking of Manual mode, in addition to the HDR toggle (well, at least it should have been a toggle, but it's a two-choice menu, why?) you get to tweak exposure parameters yourself. It's not the most full-featured - white balance, for example, can only be set to one of four presets, but not by light temperature. ISO range is 64-3200, so that's pretty good, while shutter speed can be set between 1/4000s and 30s. You can dial in exposure compensation in the -2EV to +2EV range in 1/3EV increments and you can also focus manually, but there's no focus peaking. A live histogram is also missing.

Camera app

Daylight image quality

The Xperia 5's photos taken with the main cam have lively colors and great contrast and look really appealing at fit to screen zoom level. Pixel peeping reveals good detail, though also some noise - it's not the spotless Galaxy output, though it doesn't really have to be.

Then there's the matter of dynamic range. The 'Backlit' scene in Auto mode doesn't always trigger in high-contrast scenes, and even if it does, it's not as dramatic an effect as you'd get if you go into Manual and engage the HDR yourself. It's a longstanding peculiarity of the Xperia's camera app and it's hurting it in comparisons with rivals which have always on HDR processing.

Daylight samples, main camera

The telephoto camera takes similarly good looking images as the main cam. It's plenty sharp and captures excellent detail. Much as on the Xperia 1, we observed a certain indecisiveness in autofocus performance from the telephoto camera, so once more, taking multiple shots and potentially tapping on the subject wouldn't be a bad idea.

Daylight samples, telephoto camera

The ultra wide angle camera has heavy distortion but there's software correction for that in settings. We kept that on, and even though Sony is forcing you to prioritize either 'image quality' (non-corrected image) and 'correction for distortion', we find the corrected images the better balance. If, however, you're specifically going for that distorted look, the setting is there for you.

This ultra wide lacks autofocus, so it's not the best for extreme close ups of small objects, but on the other hand it's one of the sharpest ultra wide cameras on the market. Colors are rendered to match the other modules so we're liking them too.

Dynamic range depends on the kind of processing the Auto mode picks for you and we found it to produce excellent results when it goes heavy on the HDR, and less so when it's more conservative. Too bad you can't access the ultra wide angle cam in Manual mode to toggle the HDR on yourself.

Daylight samples, ultra wide angle camera

Low-light image quality

We were quite impressed by the Xperia 1's low-light performance and the 5 doesn't disappoint either. The Auto mode can sense if your hand is stable enough and will display a tripod icon even if the phone isn't mounted on a tripod. This will allow the camera to use some night mode-like trickery that takes a couple of seconds to capture and process, but this isn't exactly an actual night mode, like the competitors are doing. Instead, the Xperia 1 drops the shutter speed down to around 1 second. And while shooting this kind of (a real) long-exposure shot, it also tries its best to compensate for the handshake - probably by using its OIS- and quite successfully we'd say.

Indeed, the Xperia 5's low-light shots are well detailed, with good noise suppression (there isnoise, of course) and color saturation. We would have preferred slightly brighter exposures on some of these, though.

Low-light samples, main camera

Sony is taking a hard-line approach and straight up defaults to the main cam when you try to shoot at 2x in the dark, so you'll get a digitally zoomed in shot. Samsung's latest Note10 does tend to use actual tele camera in some dark situations, so perhaps we'll see Sony get there eventually as well.

Low-light samples, telephoto camera

As far as ultra wide angle cameras go, the one on the Xperia 5 takes some pretty great lo-light shots. There's nowhere near the ones out of the main cam but the ultra wide does manage to capture some detail while keeping noise within reason.

Low-light samples, ultra wide angle camera

Portraits

The Xperia 5's portraits can be very good or not so much. We've had more than the usual amount of bad subject isolation which also varies particularly widely from shot to shot with minute changes of angle. Then there's the matter that HDR doesn't work in bokeh mode, so challenging light makes for a less than ideal rendition.

That said, under the right circumstances you can end up with nice portrait shots. These circumstances include a well lit face, simple haircut and reasonably close proximity to your subject.

Portrait samples

The Xperia 5 delivers fairly convincing bokeh shots of non humans too, though again your shot to shot success may vary.

Portrait mode on non-human subjects

Selfies

The Xperia 5 borrows the 1's front-facing camera. It's an 8MP unit with a 1/4" sensor, 1.12µm pixels and a lens with an f/2.0 aperture. The focus is fixed, as usual for selfie cams, though Samsung started using AF modules in the S10 and the Pixels already have autofocus on the front since last year.

In good lighting, the Xperia 5 takes nicely detailed selfies with spot on color reproduction. In dimmer settings, images do get softer but still perfectly acceptable.

Selfie samples

Portrait selfies are available, but the algorithms are easy to fool with busy backgrounds or hairstyles. While this is the norm with such single-cam implementations, we'd say the Xperia is particularly prone to bad subject isolation even with less complex shapes.

Selfie portrait samples