this time last year i was on top of a skyscraper in panama city talking about the differences
between the one mark ii and the s20 ultra both terrific phones but there was a lot of let's say
wrong information put out there by big youtubers and tech journalists about the one mark ii so
i wanted to set the record straight and i did that in a series of videos last year if we fast
forward to right now with the xperia one mark iii there's even more misinformation out there
about this device um so many of you have written to me asking is it true what i've read or seen 4k
120 hertz is not actually possible on this device it is the rumors are not true is it true that you
only get one year of support no that's not true either so what i wanted to do in this video is put
these two heavyweights head-to-head they're both absolutely fantastic phones they're amazing phones
there's no question about that and depending on what your needs are one of these could be right
in the other could be wrong but let's find out once and for all exactly what the key differences
are between these two and the results really may surprise you especially when it comes to
the photography section at the end anyway without any further ado let's see how these two stack up
so let's talk about the design to kick things off with i mean both of these look superb but i think
it's fair to say that the samsung makes much more of an outward statement in terms of the design
the camera bump is absolutely enormous it's not everyone's cup of tea but if you enjoy a phone
that makes a statement and is about as subtle as a brick this is your guy without any shadow of
a doubt and it's much more well known as well everyone knows what this is this however the
xperia here is a much more i suppose you could say it's it's um it's a minimalist sort of design it's
understated certainly it doesn't make an outward statement and personally i love that if you want
to make a bit more of an outward statement you can go for the purple color um but this looks very
very cool the matte black finish on both of them i have to say but in terms of design this i think is
much easier to live with on the daily and i say that because it's so narrow and so much lighter
than the samsung that makes a big difference after half an hour after an hour after a day it makes an
enormous difference after a week or a month or longer yes this is much easier to handle and in
case you're worried about the 21 by 9 aspect ratio making this too tall although they are both pretty
much the same height you don't have to worry about that because samsung's software which we're going
to come on to a bit later in this video really takes care of that for you so very easy to live
with but this makes a fantastic statement if that's your thing so in terms of the designs
then one final point is that you do get more let's say thoughtful additions perhaps with the sony
in terms of the hardware design here because you do get the headphone jack you do get expandable
storage or up to a terabyte or a second sim if you want um and you don't need one of those ejector
tools to get that out and that that kind of thing goes a long way with me as well as for example
things like the notification light yeah you're just getting more for your money in terms of the
hardware at least anyway but let's flip these two around now and look at the displays here because
this is where things get really interesting first thing you'll notice of course is that the sony is
21x9 the samsung is 20 by nine they both excel in different areas what's really interesting though
is that there's no hole punch or notch on the sony and that's worth its weight in gold you can
see the content as the content creator intended that really is important for certain people the
display itself 4k 120hz that's a world first from sony there incredibly impressive and it does win
indoors the samsung doesn't quite have the resolution of course but what it does offer you
are more opportunities to pick the right kind of settings for you at that particular moment
whether your number one priority uh is the best possible resolution the highest possible or you
want to save the battery and so on on the sony you can only change the refresh rate keep it at 120
or drop it down to 60. um but either way the sony wins i would say indoors but once you get outdoors
especially on a sunny sunny day nothing competes with the samsung it wins hands down in terms of
brightness is the sony bright enough it's bright enough to get you through and this one mark iii
is definitely brighter than the one mark ii from last year but i want to see much more improvement
in this area just so we can stop talking about it it is one of the drawbacks on the sony the screen
should be brighter in my opinion the other thing of course is that the whole point of
having a great display so you can watch back content and part of that is all about hearing
what it is that you're watching as well now with movies and even music the xperia that
my goodness the dual front-facing speakers here really are superb they are louder than the one
mark ii they've got more bass in them than one one mark ii and they're just much more nuanced
there's a lot of detail in there and it's really that stereo separation is even and it's beautiful
with the samsung what we're getting is a louder overall sound but it's a much more clumsy sound
it has more bass that's for sure but it is not a proper stereo it's sort of booting out of one
end for the most part but again neither one of these phones is going to leave you feeling hard
done by if you end up watching content back but the sony does edge that in my
view so let's talk about the performance and both of these phones here that i have are snapdragon
and triple eight which is fantastic they both work extremely well they both get hot if you
really really push them very very hot actually the sony gets a bit hotter but neither of these
shut down or you know there's nothing like that to worry about so they're both superb the downer
is if you're in the market for a samsung and you don't live in north america or south korea
you're going to get the exynos i think it's the 2100 which is much better than the mongoose
monstrosity from last time around but it's everyone wants the snapdragon don't they the good
news with the sony is wherever you can get hold of one of these you're going to get the snapdragon
8 model because there isn't another version having said that the difficult part with the
sony is getting hold of these because as we know these are not available in india
africa all of latin america so much of the world and that's a pity i hope that situation changes
we shall see in terms of battery life these have both got enough to get you through the day but
there's no question about it the samsung wins it can get you through a day a day and a half
i mean it's a big big heavy phone but at least it has that um battery prowess to really make you
there's no such thing as battery anxiety put it that way with the samsung with the sony you're
gonna get five hours screen on time which is not quite up there with the samsung but for me it's
fine it's absolutely fine i've only got one issue when it comes to um the other one question when it
comes to battery life can i easily get through a day yes the other thing to remember with the
batteries on the sony here is that sony does a great job of looking after them for the long term
and that's really useful if you're going to hold on to your device for the full three years or
even longer that is a nice touch so yeah swings and roundabouts but worth bearing these things
in mind so now let's talk about the camera tech now this for many is where things start to get
a bit weird when tech reviewers talk about the the setup here on the xperia saying it's not very good
and all that kind of stuff well let's talk about one thing on the sony that really isn't very good
and that is the samsung front-facing camera and that is true it is from samsung and it
is true it's not very good it's improved over the one mark ii and it is better
but it needs to be at this point price point much better than it actually is um but anyway
let's see how the two of them stack up here leah rogers uh the best uh um physical trouble
pt that i don't go to the gym very much as you can tell but she is i'm told the best pt
in wales cardiff probably you know the uk who knows um she's going to help us out with the
front-facing cameras on both and front-facing video and a quick mic check here she is
be sure to check out ame underscore productions underscore
subscribe to sony 365 and hit the thumbs up button thank you lea now on the other side um let's
let's put some actual uh photos up on the screen here so you can see how these two compare the big
criticism with the sony is that it doesn't manage to take the fight in auto mode uh to
the s21 ultra all the other big android flagships now i would argue it's very very close but the key
difference is that what you see is what you get there's no ai embellishment to speak of
the sony's color science i think we all know what that's all about it's about
natural faithful reproduction of reality reality i mean it is possible for example
on the samsung to get these beautiful arguably oh well definitely over sharpened images
super vivid really bright and i think it's fair to say certainly in the tests that i've done
that most people seem to be you know as humans we're drawn to these overly bright
overly sharpened uh images and i think that's one of the reasons why so many technology journalists
just kind of draw this conclusion that that therefore is better in auto mode
you know all i'm saying is that they're different approaches now what the sony has
is and i'll show you the two um setups here so you can see how the samsung works and how the
sony works the samsung you see is like many phones it gives you all the different modes
a lot of them of course don't exist um as modes on the xperia and they it works very very well
and pro mode is in there and again it gives you an experience that's good but it's like a phone
experience isn't it it's a proper smartphone promo type experience but that is nothing compared with
what sony gives you because what sony gives you is a full-blooded alpha experience if you're thinking
about going out and buying an alpha camera at some point and you really want to get into it this is
the perfect phone because you really do get an understanding as to the real fabric of putting
these perfect shots together you can do that on this phone and it's an enjoyable thing for the
right kind of person and nothing else in terms of smartphones will ever get you as close to this so
again if you want to get as i've said this before in other videos if you want to get
into this kind of alpha mode and really enjoy the process of taking beautiful photographs
you're going to absolutely love this the same is true with video and i'm going to do a separate
video on that pro app there on the sony very very soon but yes both of these if you want to
take absolutely beautiful looking video you can i'm showing some stuff now with me going around
on one of those kind of tuk tuks in london um not necessarily the safest driver but certainly one of
the most enthusiastic big shout out to him and yes what we're seeing again is the same sort of
thing it's a bit too vivid on the sampling but it does look cool it looks absolutely fantastic
and the sony i think it looks absolutely superb and what what this does is it shows to me that
generally speaking the two are close very very close but it shows that sony is deliberately going
after the natural color reproduction and i think it does a terrific job in terms of the quality
of london streets in central london they're very bumpy um not impressed with those at all but the
stabilization on both is excellent i actually slightly preferred it on the sony which i was
very surprised by but either way for video and for photo these are both great it's just understanding
the different philosophical approaches there so let's wrap this up now with the conclusion
for me the easier phone to live with is the slowly because of its 21 9 aspect ratio it's lighter it's
easier to use i absolutely love the pure um android setup there although i would like to
see some of those sony apps that disappeared make a reappearance of course um but side sense is just
fantastic and it's better than ever i mean it it really does make using the device an absolute joy
having said that with the the samsung although it is clunky it's big and it's heavy and it makes a
statement and all that kind of stuff i've got to hand it to samsung on the software side of things
they really really have nailed it there too you can customize this to the nth degree there's
so much to get into if you want it's impressive this is literally a million miles away from the
touchwiz nightmare of old there is one other area where i'm really in in fact there are more areas
where i'm really impressed with the samsung i like the ecosystem that samsung has unfortunately
sony hasn't given us a tablet or you know vaio is now a separate company so
and the wearables although i've got the 103 here you know samsung is definitely way ahead now in
that area it's a shame sony's pulled out of that hopefully they'll be back in there soon but they
also do extremely well when it comes to supporting their devices now until very recently samsung had
a terrible record looking after their devices i mean really bad now they're doing so well they're
actually ahead of google and considering android you know i mean that's pretty amazing isn't it so
what are we getting with samsung four years support and three os upgrades it looks like
for the flagships sony isn't there you're getting three years support um and probably two upgrades i
would say now sony doesn't go out and make this clear i think that's a pity and i would like to
see them do that but even more importantly i want them to make a statement and to be the number one
in android the only one that can truly rival apple when it comes to support with their iphone devices
let's go for five years let's go for six more than any other company out there sony can do it because
this hardware they can have confidence in it not just because of how they look after the battery
tech but how well it's put together i hope this video helps thank you so much for watching the
next video is my verdict on the one mark iii then my full final verdict on the five mark iii and
then we're gonna do some cool photography stuff on both of those two phones thank you so much for
watching i'll see you next time i don't know why i did that this isn't a yoga video thank god bye