Weekly poll results: the Sony Xperia Pro-I is well received, but not everyone needs a professional phone

While the meaning of “Pro” has been watered down over the years, people still believe there is a place for truly professional smartphones like the Sony Xperia Pro-I.

It’s not a phone for everyone, that’s clear enough in last week’s poll. But it wasn’t meant to be, it is aimed at a particular subset of professions – vloggers, along with anyone who would benefit from high-quality 4K 120 fps video. You may think that $1,800/€1,800 is pricey, but the Pro-I is meant to slot in between regular smartphones and professional cameras (now those are really pricey).

Okay, chances are that National Geographic won’t shoot its next documentary on a phone – Sony has a whole line of cinema cameras for that – but a phone like this could be more suitable for small (even one man) operations. There are three different camera apps, each with a different balance of manual and auto controls (more details in this article).

The thing is that buying the most expensive piece of kit doesn’t guarantee that you will get great footage – or even usable footage. When it comes to learning at the job, the Xperia Pro-I is an all-in-one package that lets you start off simple and gradually move on to more a more manual setup for your shots.

At the end of the day, the market for phones such as the Xperia Pro-I isn’t huge, but there isn’t much competition either – few phones aim for the “at work” part of life.