Sony just announced the Xperia Pro-I ('I' stands for 'imaging') with a 1" Exmor RS camera sensor, lifted from the company's RX100 VII compact camera, but 'optimised for a smartphone' (i.e. cropped!) and with 315 sensor-points of real time PDAF. The lens is Zeiss-coated and stabilized with a dual aperture capabilty that goes from f/2.0 to f/4.0 when needed (bright light and maximum depth of field).

Notably, and disappointly, the 20MP 1" sensor is cropped slightly, to give the 12MP output, rather than using oversampling, as used in countless Lumias 5 or 6 years ago. Oh well.

The Xperia Pro-I also has another pair of 12MP cameras - a f/2.2 ultrawide unit and a f/2.4 2x telephoto, mainly used to help portrait shots, presumably. It's a little odd to see such a monster main lens and then not have a long zoom (e.g. with a periscope) as well, though, especially at the price. All lenses have T* coatings.

Video is also central to the Xperia Pro-I's mission, with 4K video at up to 120fps (for cinematic 5x slow motion).

Away from imaging, we're talking:

• 6.5" 4K OLED at 120Hz refresh rate
• Snapdragon 888 chipset with 12GB of RAM
• 512GB storage, plus microSD
• 4,500mAh battery
• USB-PD fast charging
• 4G and sub-6 5G
• IP68 rating
• USB-C 3.2 Gen 2
• DisplayPort and HDMI video output
• NFC, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2
• capacitive fingerprint reader
• 3.5mm audio jack

Sales start in December, in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the Nordics, at €1,799. 

I don't really understand Sony's thinking sometimes - they say the Xperiai-I is 'aimed at photographers'. But then, by definition, these users don't need a £1600 camera-phone. They already own a DSLR at the very least. Your thoughts welcome.

PS. GSMArena somehow already has a hands-on published.