The new HTC U12+ bucks the trend in the latest flagship phones that offer extreme high frame rates like 480fps and 960fps for short time frames. Instead, the phone touts 240fps at 1080p and 4k 60p as the main frame rate specs. This is competitive with the iPhone X & Samsung Galaxy S9 series where 4k at 60p is now the default offering for the UHD format on the high end and 240p at full HD on the SlowMo feature front.
This U12+ phone has dual cameras in the front and back which allow it to do interesting bokeh out of focus effects on all types of shots including video mode which may be a first. As to the quality of the effect in video, it will have to be scrutinized to see where it lands and if its good enough to use as a narrative video capture device. The phone has all the top specs of today and the camera has gathered a 103 score on the DXOMark test which is the 2nd best camera on a phone ever after the excellent Huawei P20 Pro at 109.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The full specs are official now and the OnePlus 6 is now considered a flagship phone by any measure you can throw at it. It has massive memory, speed and a price that will not break the bank at just $529 USD for the smaller capacity 64GB version. It has dual cameras and 4K shooting at 60FPS, 1080p at full 240FPS, and our favorite spec 720p at 480FPS.
Gone is the 960fps spec of phones like the Samsung Galaxy S9 & Sony Xperia XZ2 but with the added benefit of shooting 1800 frames of it which translates to 60 seconds playback “1 Minute” at 30p on the OnePlus 6. So an entire usable minute of slow motion at 720p will be a welcomed addition to any slow motion fans and while quality will have to be seen and analyzed, it already makes for a better overall experience than the 0.2 seconds recording of the competition.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The short but to the point footage shows what will be slow motion clips produced with the new OnePlus 6 handset. You can see that a lot of care has been taken to shoot professional looking footage that will showcase the high frame rate capabilities. We are not sure if the resolution aliasing we are seeing is from the phone quality or the video compression.
Considering Sony and Samsung have similar artifacts OnePlus will look good on smaller screens but not ideal blown up on a monitor or TV. Professional lighting is no substitute to real line resolution for footage. We should know more as May 16th launch date approaches and we will be gladly surprised if the phone is capable of higher resolution slow motion recording than the competition with better recording time which has been the Achilles heel for these slow-motion phone features. 0.2 and 0.1 seconds is just not long enough for having a usable span of time.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The folks at OnePlus have been busy and by the looks of the recently leaked images of the OnePlus 6, it seems the phone is almost an identical looking handset to the iPhone X design with notch included. The invitation to the event on May 16th, 2018 for the unveil mentions “Live Life in Super Slow Mo”which we believe will be a 960fps slow-motion mode akin to that in the Galaxy S9 & S9+ or the Sony Xperia ZX2.
OnePlus has been one of the best performing handsets for Android users due to their use of the best components out there along with a streamlined ROM that does away with most bloatware on the main install. Users of these phones also routinely claim huge battery life due to the optimized nature of the background tasks. For Slow Motion, they have only been competitive on the mid-range but that will probably change if Slow Motion is a big feature on this new phone.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
It seems that the cellphone has once again taken no prisoners when it comes to the portable consumer camera. Casio which was probably the most influential affordable high-speed camera developer 10 year ago with the EX-F1 has now decided to retrench and effectively end their portable consumer camera development due to mounting losses with no clear path to profitability for the division.
The Japanese hi-tech company generated a loss of 500 million Yen (or $4.6 million U$) in the 2017 fiscal year for the division. They will effectively pull out of the market to stop the bleeding. It is quite sad to see a company that created the EX-F1 and the excellent EX-FH20 eliminate their entire consumer camera division. Could things have been different and could they have avoided the phone camera erosion that has obliterated the sales of most manufacturers? Our only thought would be that they did not innovate fast enough to remain competitive for the consumer to be a real alternative.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Last week the site The Information posted a piece stating the possibility of GoPro being bought out by Chinese electronics company Xiaomi which are the makers of the main competitor to GoPro in the same form factor with the Yi camera line. We liked the Yi 4k+ last year as it delivered pretty acceptable quality in 4k 60p in a GoPro like the body+enclosure design. We were not thrilled by the bit rates or the slow-motion quality but it was in the running for the best alternative action camera with a lower price.
If the rumors are true Xiaomi will be consolidating the Action camera market and improving the Yi camera line overnight by rebranding it to GoPro as the name might be just as valuable as the technology being acquired. Most of the current Yi camera products share the components with pre Hero 6 Black cameras like the Hero 5 Black as they were based on the Ambarella chips that GoPro used for a decade.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
