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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MattL - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
Not strange at all, often certain places will get early review devices, they got an early iPhone 6 and 6+ too.Arcetnathon7 - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
Yes, but every early review of iPhone 6 and 6+ are "strangely" without any benchmarks.We always have to wait for Anandtech :)
MattL - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
Well Display Mate had Note 4 and iPhone 6 Plus screen reviews up for a while now... I honestly would trust them more on the screen side of things anyways (they are far more comprehensive in their analysis and are obviously specialized experts in screens)... just curious as to the differences seen between theirs and the analysis here since they found the Note 4 definitely more accurate vs here.I do agree that you see very few iPhone 6 reviews with benchmarks though.
I would be very interested in other sites doing in-depth screen analysis runs, should give a better picture... but unfortunately not many sites do and the couple others I have seen are *horrible*, they didn't even realize that the Note 4's screen modes actually supported different color gamuts so they critiqued the color accuracy on the Adaptive mode specifically designed to have a high saturation of the color gamut to fend off ambient light washing out that saturation or the Photo mode which supports the Adobe RGB color gamut (17% larger than sRGB) do a high degree of accuracy, but when viewing non Adobe RGB content it will analyze off obviously. While the Basic mode is designed to be extremely color accurate to the sRGB standard (again Display Mate found it to be the most accurate of any smartphone or tablet screen, even the iPhone 6 screens)... so those sites results are pointless.
tralalalalalala40 - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
Does the user have to manually change the color scheme on the note4 for every app?tralalalalalala40 - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
The golden phone review, hand picked by robots maybe? At least they aren't programming their phones to cheat benchmarks anymore (most likely)trynberg - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
So, the iPhone 6+ is declared the best phablet with no supporting statements or qualifications. The Note 4 gets "remains one of the best phablets on the market, but whether it's the best for a given user is a matter of priorities and personal preference rather than any absolutes".I mean, how blind do you have to be to not see the bias there?
KPOM - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
This is actually a much more positive review of the Note 4 than ArsTechnica. AT basically said it comes down to your OS preference.MattL - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
Ars had the most negative Note 4 review I've seen anywhere on the web... really surprised about that, very disappointed.tralalalalalala40 - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
Go to samsung's website, they have a great review of the note 4 that should cheer you up.TrackSmart - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Thanks for the review! As always, this is much more complete information than you find at competing sites.That said, the Battery Charging Speed Test is not as useful as it could be. Supposedly this phone charges to 50% in the first 30 minutes. That means most of your testing time represents "topping off" the battery. Consider adding 50% or 75% charge speeds instead of (or in addition to) 100%. It would tell us which phones allow a user to quickly get back to business.