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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xype - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
Uh, huh, haha, you are teh funnay.It _is_ ugly, actually. Plenty of better looking Android devices out there. I don’t know why tech writers need to even add stuff like "design massively improved", when it’s actually not _massively_ improved.
And, no, I don’t think the iPhone 6 is massively improved design-wise (though it looks better from the front than anything Samsung offers), either.
And design is not subjective and open to interpretation. If it was, people wouldn’t be able to agree on a "best design", ever, because the type of looks people liked would be evenly divided among all kinds of designs. And there would be no rules on how to make things look good, either. Just because companies like Samsung don’t understand them it doesn’t mean that those don’t exist.
Tams80 - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
People don't agree on 'best design ever'. Well a small group of self congratulatory can, but such a group have often lost touch with reality.theduckofdeath - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
You're shooting yourself in the foot if you're arguing that design is not subjective, as Samsung sell 300 million smartphones every year, all of them tends to follow the design language of their current flagship device. So....?tralalalalalala40 - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
They are giving phones away. Consumers like that, and Samsung is only helping google ironically. Seen their profit's this quarter?solipsism - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
So the Note 4 is thicker, header, only a 32GB only, and USB 3.0 replaced with USB 2.0 over the Note 3? Am I reading that properly?theduckofdeath - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Probably not, because we don't know what you mean by header. :DThe phone will also come with 64GB storage and it supports SD storage at 128GB and 256GB when that size is in the stores.
The shift back to USB 2 is probably a pretty smart one, as the larger USB 3 connector isn't very convenient.
melgross - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Using the USB 3 connector wouldn't allow you to make phone calls, among other problems. They had to get rid of it. I can't understand why testing didn't show that.NZtechfreak - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
I didn't wait for 256gb micro SD, using a full size 256gb SD in my Note 3 (modified wooden case and ribbon adapter). So, if you must have that right now you can. I'm mulling over whether to get the 512gb SD card and stay with my Note 3 until my contact renews and then grab a Note 4 or something else...rpg1966 - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
"...every GPS fix is a hot fix and takes around 5 seconds" and "...I saw that it took around 50 seconds to achieve a lock".I'm sure I'm being a bit thick, but what does this mean? The initial lock is ~50s, then ~5s thereafter?
JoshHo - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
The initial lock is 50s only if you deliberately clear assistance data (or it expires after a few days of non-use) with airplane mode on. Otherwise it should be less than 10-15 seconds.