Sony’s Xperia Pro-I is a do-it-all smartphone with an RX100 VII-like camera sensor and variable aperture lens

Sony has launched the Xperia Pro-I, a premium-tier smartphone with some next-level photography credentials and exorbitant pricing to tag along. One look at its spec sheet and it’s clear, it is a camera first and smartphone later which is probably why Sony is charging a bomb for it. The ‘I’ in the name actually stands for ‘imaging’ for crying out loud.

The headlining feature of the Xperia Pro-I is its RX100 VII-like sensor and variable aperture lens. That’s right, Sony has somehow managed to miniaturise the sensor it is using in its popular point-and-shoot camera and fit it inside a do-it-all smartphone. The Xperia Pro-I has a near identical 1.0-type Exmor RS image sensor with phase detection autofocus as the one seen in the Mark 7. We say ‘near identical’ because Sony is using only a part of that Mark 7 sensor and not the complete stack. The setup is still pretty powerful though.