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Home / News / HDR video in your pocket? Sony’s Xperia X Premium could make it happen

HDR video in your pocket? Sony’s Xperia X Premium could make it happen

And the award for "most unlikely rumour" goes to...

There’s a very, very good chance this won’t turn out to be true, but it’s so juicy we just had to share it – Sony could be bringing HDR video to smartphones.

According to Phoneradar, Sony’s upcoming Xperia X Premium will be the first with HDR video, meaning brighter whites, a wider colour range and more detail in dark scenes than any other phone.

The leak says it’ll have a 5.5in Full HD screen that plays back HDR video, a USB Type-C port that’ll be handy for getting those huge HDR files onto the phone, and power from a Snapdragon 820 CPU.

Just a couple of problems with the idea of HDR on phones, though. First off, the only HDR video content out there right now comes from Netflix or UHD Blu-ray – and it’s almost all in 4K. A 1080p screen wouldn’t really do it justice, and that’s if you could actually get it on there.

Maybe Sony’s got an HDR streaming service planned? Otherwise there won’t be a whole lot you’ll be able to watch on an HDR phone.

You’ll also need a colossal battery in order to pump out the 1300 nit brightness needed for HDR. Samsung’s Galaxy S7 manages 855 nits at full whack – a figure Sony would have to nearly double to make HDR work on mobile.

The biggest problem, though? Instead of 256 shades of red, blue and green, for a total of 16.8 million possible colours, HDR screens have 1024 each. That’s a whole lot more colours, but Android doesn’t actually support that many. It’s limited to 16 million.

True, Android limitations haven’t stopped Sony before. The Xperia Z5 Premium had a 4K display, and even though Android 6 Marshmallow didn’t actually support such a high resolution, Sony’s Gallery app still showed 4K photos in all their glory.

Do we think HDR on a phone is on the way? Sony’s done some crazy things before, so it’s not entirely impossible, but we aren’t holding out until we hear something a bit more official.

Profile image of Tom Morgan-Freelander Tom Morgan-Freelander Deputy Editor

About

A tech addict from about the age of three (seriously, he's got the VHS tapes to prove it), Tom's been writing about gadgets, games and everything in between for the past decade, with a slight diversion into the world of automotive in between. As Deputy Editor, Tom keeps the website ticking along, jam-packed with the hottest gadget news and reviews.  When he's not on the road attending launch events, you can usually find him scouring the web for the latest news, to feed Stuff readers' insatiable appetite for tech.

Areas of expertise

Smartphones/tablets/computing, cameras, home cinema, automotive, virtual reality, gaming