Sony has been focusing on the cameras included in their smartphones for a while. They were one of the first manufacturers to include 20-megapixel sensors in their smartphones, and they use some of the technologies that were found on their Cyber-Shot camera lineup. Since the company introduced the Xperia M4 Aqua, it was clear that the company was bringing some of the features of their high-end offerings into the mid-range, including upgraded cameras and a similar design that was dustproof and water resistant. Last week, Sony announced the Xperia M5 and while the design continues to look very good, the screen got much sharper and almost every aspect got upgraded, one of the most important upgrades was in the camera department.
The Xperia M5 features a 21.5-megapixel Exmor RS Hybrid Autofocus main camera, which uses Phase Detection Autofocus resulting in a faster shutter speed response and it is aided by Contrast Detection Autofocus making it more precise, so the camera can capture sharp pictures in various lighting conditions even with moving objects. It is said to focus an object in just 0.25 seconds, which is faster than phones with a regular Autofocus system. The front-facing camera also features a very high-resolution sensor of 13 megapixels with Autofocus.
Now, the faster Autofocus of the Xperia M5 is compared to the one in the HTC One M9+, which features a 20-megapixel sensor in the back and the same processor as the M5. It’s no secret that HTC has been struggling with the cameras included in their latest flagships, but the video shows that the Sony phone is indeed faster at focusing when shifting from an object that is closer to the camera to another that is far from it. There are some picture samples taken from both phones below, (Xperia M5 samples will be the left image, HTC One M9+ samples will be the right image) showing that the ones taken with the Xperia M5 are indeed sharper than those produced by the One M9+, especially when looking at the 100% crops. The images were taken at an F2.0 aperture and full-size images are about 5.5 MB. It’s nice to see that companies are integrating better technologies into the cameras on mid-range devices, we can only imagine more improvements on newer flagships.
