The iPhone 5 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Brian Klug & Vivek Gowri on October 16, 2012 11:33 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone 5
Video: Finally High Profile H.264
Section by Brian Klug
There are a few things different with video capture on the iPhone 5 thanks to improvements to both the ISP inside Apple’s A6 SoC, and also software UI changes. First off, because the iPhone 5 display is now 16:9, there’s no cropped view by default or aspect-correct view with letterboxing for video capture. Instead the iPhone 5 video capture window takes an iPad-like approach with transparent UI elements for preview and shooting video.
What’s new is the ability to take still images at 1920x1080 while recording video by tapping a still image capture button that appears while recording. This is a feature we’ve seen onboard a ton of other smartphones and works the same way here. Note that you can’t magically get a wider field of view or the whole CMOS area while shooting video, it’s essentially dumping one frame from video capture as a JPEG instead of into an H.264 container.
In addition the iPhone 5’s tweaked Sony CMOS still uses a smaller center region for video capture. The difference in field of view is pretty big, but nothing that users haven’t already dealt with in the past.
The iPhone 5 brings two main things to video capture. The first is improved electronic image stabilization tweaks and improvements to ISP. The difference is visible but not too dramatic unless you know what you’re looking for. I would wager most users won’t notice a huge step forward from the 4S but if you’re using an iPhone 4 this will be a marked improvement.
The other improvement is video encoding. The iPhone 5 now shoots rear facing 1080p30 video at 17 Mbps H.264 high profile with CABAC. This is a huge step in encoding from the relatively absurd 22–24 Mbps baseline H.264 that the iPhone 4S would shoot at 1080p30. The result is vastly more quality per bit on the iPhone 5, for a big reduction in storage space per minute of video. I did some digging around and found that the A6 uses an Imagination Technologies PowerVR VXE380 for encoding and VXD390 for decoding, which is what I thought was in the previous SoC as well but perhaps wasn’t clocked high enough for encode at high profile. This brings the iPhone 5’s encoder on paper up to match what I see other smartphones running their 1080p video at as well (17 Mbps high profile).
On the front facing camera Apple is shooting 720p30 at 11 Mbps H.264 baseline, as opposed to the VGA at 3.5 Mbps that the 4S shot. Interestingly enough both front and rear shooting modes still are just mono audio, 64 kbps AAC. I would’ve liked to see stereo here since almost all the competition is shooting stereo, and it’d put those 3 microphones to use.
To get a feel for video quality, I stuck my iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 in my dual camera bracket with pistol grip and made a series of three videos. I then combined them and put them side by side for ease of comparison. I’ve uploaded the result to YouTube, but you can also grab the original videos (548 MB zip) if you’d like from the site directly without the transcode.
Overall the most dramatic improvement is the front facing camera, which is obviously night and day. Better image stabilization is noticeable while I’m walking around being intentionally shaky, but nothing hugely dramatic. The main rear facing video improvement seems to be an increase in sharpness (watch the power lines and wires in the native resolution version) and slightly wider field of view. That’s to say nothing of the fact that this quality comes at a bitrate that’s lower than the previous version but with better encode settings.
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darwinosx - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
The iPhone 5 display is better than any current Android display.But Motorola and Android if you want a company that is dying and being sold and a copycat cheap phone with no service and support.
V-Money - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Your wisdom and informative argument adds tremendous value to this post. For the record though, the OP said specifically battery life and 720p display, so the response was relevant.The rest of your post is petty, get over yourself. If you are going to play the copycat card you should have done it before Apple decided to go with a bigger screen and use a (eerily similar) notification bar to what Android phones have had for years.
As for quality (of display or otherwise), that is subjective analysis and considering that Apple only releases one phone at a time and Android manufacturers many, its a stupid argument for anyone to make. Case and point, I can find many android phones that are much more terrible than the iPhone, but I can also find many that are better. The iPhone is a decent phone, but its not for everyone. Every consumer has their preference.
My point being there is not one-size-fits-all phone, so quit acting high and mighty with your close mindedness. You are not better than those around you because you bought into Apple's marketing, you are just a fool dealing with the first world problem of living such a meaningless existence that you have to hold on to the imaginary power an inanimate object pretends to give to you.
Alucard291 - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
I feel that your argument may be too good for him to reply to :)He seems awfully angry :D
crankerchick - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Great reply. If there's one place I just want to exchange comments without playing the "my toy is better than yours" game, it's here on AnandTech.Gradly - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
I'm sick of ppl comparing iPhone to other devices. I'm sick of those telling you iPhone borrowed the notifications slider form android and skipping the myriad of things that other borrowed form iPhone. Apple has always said that "we are not the first but we do it the best". I'm sick of those who still don't realize that before iPhone ppl were living in caves actually.I'm an Apple lover not an Apple fanboy. I just adore the design, aesthetics, and GUI of Apple devices.
Penti - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
It's sadly Apple that goes and patent UI-elements to use against their competitors that is why it's always brought up. It would be totally unnecessary otherwise. You might look at who's the inspiration otherwise and it's often not Apple. In reality we had capacitive touch screens (it's not Apples tech of course) before, app store before, Android even had an SDK out before Apple. Competitors like Symbian/Nokia, HP WebOS, and Blackberry are even allowed to use stuff like bounce back effect even without (or before) any agreement with Apple. They should have credit but they didn't all the sudden bring out their device with what we now call smartphone features, it lacked most functions at first and slowly iterated, it did a lot poorer in many areas then it's competitors was doing even before iPhone and the first few years it also showed in sales numbers which were not high at the first 2-3 years. It did show us how important a good platform was. Guys like Rubin had already figured that out though. So I'm not sure what they would borrow. Full WebKit-browsers on mobile is a good example of stuff they are co-developing but it was out in Nokia devices in 2006, netfront and Opera was never good alternatives to build into your platform. Stock Android don't have the bounce back effect, UI's looking like Apples and so on. Not even TouchWiz on Samsung's tablets looks like or infringes anything (design-wise) by Apple. They clearly have their own ideas. They are not the "me too", others might try to emulate them more in a business sense though. But they will be punished by the market by their execution instead of by Apple. It's not like any of the major players are fruit ninja-clones though.iPhone was desperately rudimentary at first. It didn't do applications and the web, messaging, photos etc better then anybody. What they did good was to iterate and improve. They take enterprise / corporate customers more seriously then Microsoft and so on in this field. Even if it took some time for them to get there. So they do plenty of good. It's a good platform, but it's not like they gave their competitors their blueprints for their devices / os of today back in 2007 and both have made many improvements. Well maybe not Microsoft but it takes a few years to start over. Apple has even got into hardware (components) a bit. Commoditization and convergence has reached far beyond the mobile field. That's great even if Apple won't enter them. Still don't know why any competitor would like to turn themselves into a retail giant and employ mostly store staff as Apple does – Microsoft should start doing what they are good at instead. Google would be the most evil company in the world if they had started to patent and sue based on UI-features and methods. Or if they really tried to stop Bing and Bing Maps (and getting it banned in some markets) for example. It doesn't really matter who was first and who invented what if you take it to court were that doesn't really count and that creates a lot of BS surrounding the whole issue and companies involved that is largely unnecessary. But the real silly thing is why they fight. It's not based on IPR, it's basically that they want to be alone in doing whatever, even if they can't really make that claim to have sole rights to something. But ultimately courts do get that under control even when corporate leaders turn to fighting outside of releasing product.
slickr - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
LOL. Don't make me laugh. It has still the worst display and has had the worst display for at least 3 years.A5 - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Your response is just as dumb as his. The iPhones have excellent displays.medi01 - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
None of the iPhones have anything to compare with AMOLEDs, on top of having idiotic resolution.On tablet space, only iPad 3 matched color gamut of THE FIRST Samsung Galaxy Tab.
thunng8 - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
How does 67.5% of sRGB on the galaxy tab 10.1 match the 94.4% on the ipad 3?http://www.anandtech.com/show/5688/apple-ipad-2012...