Sony sticks to the straight and narrow as it eyes film fans

SONY has doubleddown on what it thinks is its ergonomic design advantage: ‘skinny’ phones.

As with some previous models, the width of its latest mid-range handset, the 6-inch Xperia 10ii, is noticeably less than other phones of the same length. This makes the phone easier to wrap your hand around and will probably lead to less thumb strain for those who stretch their primary digit across the screen too much.

While there are positive and negative ergonomic effects from this, it’s not actually the reason that Sony says it is making these skinny phones. Instead, this form factor has been chosen purportedly to make it seem like a more perfect fit for movies that now use a 21:9 aspect ratio. This size, more like a ‘letterbox’ format than the squarer formats we used to watch on our tellies years ago, apparently amounts to around 70pc of new films on Netflix.

(But not television series, which are still mostly made to fit a slightly boxier 16:9 or 18:9 format.)

So Sony, which is trying to reposition its smartphones as higher-class audio-visual accessories rather than simply Android slabs, is positioning the Xperia handsets as something of a cinephile’s tool of choice.

Its retention of the 3.5mm jack, which true audiophiles might like as a conduit for their high-end wired headphones, also goes some way to reinforce this notion.

The Xperia 10ii has three decent rear cameras, incorporating an ultrawide, wide and telephoto model. But even though Sony still makes the majority of camera sensors, don’t expect any earth-shattering quality. It has plenty (128GB) of storage memory, a fingerprint scanner on the side and is also now waterresistant. Its display is nice and bright, while its engine is amply powered. Battery life is medium and the engine, courtesy of 4GB of Ram and a Snapdragon 665, is decent.