Sony Xperia Pro-II tipped to launch with manual control for variable aperture lens

Sony touts its inaugural Xperia Pro-I as the smartphone for 'serious' photographers, even compared to other camera-centric premium Android smartphones, the Xperia 1 III on which it is based included. Accordingly, it still manages to cost nearly $1,000 on Amazon today (December 18, 2023), partly due to the rapidly dwindling possibility of a successor emerging before the end of this year.

Nevertheless, the Pro-II (or Pro 2, or maybe Pro-I II) is projected to join the Xperia 1 V on the market in 2024, and may, thus, be based on the putative next-gen 1 VI instead. Should that be the case, it is now tipped to launch with "a manual focus aperture and zoom design", thereby giving rise to speculation that it will have a miniature version of a physical clickwheel, just like a real lens.

That is because the hypothetical controls are reportedly part of a "main camera ring" found around the "Pro-II's" wide-angle and periscope zoom lenses. Then again, these intriguing phrases are part of the machine translation of a new Japanese-language Sumaho Digest article, which is in turn based on the writer's interpretation of a Weibo post on the subject.

Therefore, it could all just mean that the Xperia Pro-II might launch with a new variable aperture lens, as a new rival to those found in some newer Xiaomi or Huawei smartphones. Then again, Sony's version is said to be incapable of stepless adjustment, due to "the size and weight of the motor". Therefore, fine manual control might be beyond it after all.