The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review
by Joshua Ho on October 15, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Android
- Mobile
- Galaxy Note 4
Video Performance
In terms of video, the Galaxy Note 4 mainly benefits from the newer Snapdragon 805/APQ8084 SoC, and the addition of OIS. For the most part, there aren't any new video recording modes on the Note 4, as we see 4K30, 1080p60 and 1080p30 video available to the user.
For 1080p30 recording we see a 17Mbps bit rate with an H.264 high profile encoder. In practice I didn't really see any issues here, although on the exit sign at the end of the video there's noticeable aliasing
In 4K30 recording mode we see a 48Mbps bit rate with the same encoder as the 1080p30 setting. There's a significant increase in visible detail when compared to 1080p, but it seems that this mode is capped at a maximum of five minutes for video length and videos where temporal resolution is more important than spatial resolution will generally see relatively little benefit. EIS/video stabilization is also disabled for 4K recording, so OIS becomes quite critical for even casual video recording in 4K.
In 1080p60 mode we see a 28 Mbps bit rate with the same encode as in 1080p30. I don't really see visible detail degradation in this mode, and temporal resolution is clearly better than any of the other modes. This mode, as with 1080p30 supports EIS/video stabilization although using such a mode will reduce the field of view when compared to video with EIS off. One constant throughout all of these videos is the noticeably jerky nature of the OIS. It's hard for me to tell whether this is the result of an inability to damp certain motions due to the magnitude of the change or the OIS resetting itself during recording, but I suspect that this is a limitation of OIS that would require electronic image stabilization to compensate.
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reininop - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
I agree on some points. When he describes in one sentence how the UI is "surprisingly functional", it implies some degree of expectation that the UI was broken before he even reviewed it. In the next sentence, he then describes the much more functional Iphone 6 software stack.I have not used either so the statement maybe be completely factual, but I have to take it with a grain of salt when there is obvious bias in the previous statement.
grayson_carr - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Doesn't he say the Note 4 software is more functional, but the iPhone 6 Plus software is more polished? I would have to agree with that having used both phones.theduckofdeath - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
All other sites are complaining about the lack of polish for the iPhone 6 plus, that nothing is optimised for the large display. In contrast, everything is optimised for the large display on the Note 4. So, yeah, I agree with the OP. Anandtech has been suffering from acute RDF for several years.tralalalalalala40 - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
10 thousand+ apps have already updated on iOS to support large display in iP6. Apps will catch up much faster than expected.melgross - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Um, about the same.tralalalalalala40 - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
zug zug the battery is better because it has more Li ions zug zugreality: battery life depends of efficiency of calculations
clumsyalex - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Hey these photos/videos were taken at UCLA!kmmatney - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
Yep! I spent many years there getting my BS and MS in Materials Science (1988 - 1994). The building on the right didn't exist when I was there. I think that's Sproul Hall in the distance.kokono - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Why Apple is still faster??It has only a double core cpu and no RAM..
melgross - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Different philosophy. Instead of using four weak cores, they use two strong ones. Comlanies using eight cores generally are using four BIG, and four LITTLE. All of those cores are weaker yet. There's just so much you can do with similarly sized chips.