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Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium is the second smartphone with support for HDR Netflix

Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium is the second smartphone with support for HDR Netflix

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Xperia XZ Premium
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium is one of the few smartphones with an HDR-capable display. And now, its owners are getting a new way to take advantage of it: Netflix.

As spotted by Android Police, Netflix has added support for streaming HDR video to the XZ Premium. That makes Sony’s high-end smartphone the second phone period to support HDR streaming from Netflix. The first phone was the LG G6, which gained support in May.

It’s obviously been a pretty slow rollout, and the mess of HDR standards isn’t helping matters. The LG G6 supports Dolby Vision and HDR10 from Netflix, while the XZ Premium seems to support HDR10 only. Meanwhile, Samsung’s Galaxy S8 — which has very likely sold in far larger quantities than both of those phones combined — has an HDR display but no Netflix support. This is possibly because Samsung is using some other HDR format called Mobile HDR Premium.

Netflix’s rollout will likely pick up as more high-end smartphones come out with HDR displays — around, hopefully, standardized formats. But for now, support is pretty limited. And expanding it to a high-end Sony phone doesn’t change the situation for all that many people.