This week we had the announcement by Samsung of the Galaxy S21 phone line which is the de-facto Android handset in most of the world. The Galaxy S21 Slow Motion has essentially the same feature set as the Galaxy S20 of 2020 when it comes to high-speed video. The Galaxy brand went serious with Slow Motion since the Galaxy S9 with the 960fps mode at 720p which we can still see here with somewhat improved resolution and recording time.
The S21 line is by almost any standard a refinement of the line with very subtle but important updates on the previous S20 phones. We get the Snapdragon 888 which is the brightest and fastest SoC in non-Apple land. We get 120Hz adaptive screen refresh rate and 108MP telephoto camera on the Ultra version with 10x hybrid zoom, and half that at 64MP on the regular S21 and S21+ which only offer 3x hybrid zoom. We also get 8k video recording on all of the phones at 24p which we will have to test if it is really delivering on the promise.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Sony has been relatively quiet about phones since the Xperia 1 II roll out. However, rumors have been heating up on the Xperia 5 II, which is a lower-cost alternative to the flagship phone but very nearly as capable without the best screen or construction but not skimming on features. The latest rumor mentions a spec sheet that makes it a 4k 120fps recording phone which may show that handsets still are seen as innovators when it comes to cameras since very few consumer devices in the camera world can record at that frame rate.
We were not very happy that Sony basically killed the super slow motion mode on the Xperia 1 II phone which kind of showed that Sony was putting stills and regular video at the forefront without making compromises in sensors that needed to shoot at higher frame rates. Sony chose to do cleaner regular frame rate video and stills that were better than any Sony phone before at the cost of not having a do it all sensor. Slow motion from Sony was all but killed but the Xperia 5 II now makes us second guess that fate…→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Samsung will start shipping to stores the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra on August 21, 2020. This new phone is the latest and greatest on their line of ultra-performance devices that offer little compromise at a premium price. It has a 108MP sensor on an f1.8 lens on the Note 20 Ultra 5G version that can do crazy zoom and pixel averaging in low light. The more pixels you record even if they are small let you do more computational photography processing to average noise and artifacts out to end with a crisper lower resolution image that is pleasing and punches above it’s weight.
However, not all is good news since the video mode in Samsung devices when it comes to slow motion has been stalling in the last iterations to a max 960fps mode in HD 720p which is now on this phone an interpolated 480fps mode that is slowed 2x to 960p. This makes the Note 20 line an inferior slow-mo device to even the Galaxy S10 which offers real 960fps. The good thing here is a full second of recording at 480fps on the Note 20 line which translates to 16 seconds playback at 30fps and 32seconds with interpolation.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
This year we have decided to have a special post to highlight the advancements in smartphone camera systems that allow the recording of super slow motion video. We have seen after all huge advancement this year especially by Asian companies making their best efforts to exploit the camera module’s strengths without crippling them to sell a newer model. The Chinese have decided to create a camera war between phone builders that one-up each other every few months.
We value image quality just as high as frame rate and when phones claim to be 1080p in high frame rate modes we usually find that the real case if 720p or similar upscaled to full HD 1080 with artifacts and jagged edges that can make you dizzy. But not all phones are created equal and that is where this list of the best of 2019 comes in. If by any chance an even stronger contender comes in before the end of the year we might revise this list but it would be a fluke.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The just released Xperia XZ3 had a lot of rumors surrounding the slow-motion capability which was to be a cut above previous releases but as first-hand reviewers have shown, the camera module is carried over from the XZ2 and what the phone really changes are the first ever Sony OLED display in HDR, larger battery and a larger screen as main feature changes.
The Slow Motion component is unchanged from the XZ2 at 960fps in Full HD 1080p and 720p with just 6.4 seconds worth of playback at 30fps and 3.2 seconds at 1080p 30fps timeline. The hone only records for 0.1 seconds at 960fps in 1080p and 0.2 sec for 720p. Hardly a usable slow motion format for the people looking to capture long slow motion in the several second time-range.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The Galaxy S8 is still fresh in the minds of people and while the flagship phone offers some very compelling design and performance, the now rumored Galaxy S9 which should be announced sometime in Q1 2018 “MWC Barcelona”, will offer a much faster processing pipeline for imaging, augmented reality and object recognition. All of these technologies increase the odds of higher framerates as a side-effect of the faster scanning modes needed for these features.
However, according to rumors, the Galaxy S9 is also going to use a new imaging sensor with built-in DRAM in the same package capable of 1000fps recording at some resolution. Will it be HD or Full HD? That remains to be seen but our money is more on the 720p spec as was demonstrated earlier this year in the Sony Xperia XZ series shooting 1000fps for the minute amount of time 0.27 seconds, proves that these types of specs on phones are still quite limited in recording time & resolution.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
