The iPhone 5s Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 17, 2013 9:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone
- iPhone 5S
Video
Apple’s new H6 ISP brings with it a modernization of the video recording options for the iPhone 5s. The default video record mode is still 1080p at 30 fps, but there’s also a new 720p 120 fps “slo-mo” mode as well. In the latter, video is captured at 120 fps but optionally played back at 30 fps in order to achieve a high speed camera/slow motion effect. The result is pretty cool:
In the camera UI you can select what portions of the video you want to play back at 30 fps and what portions you want to leave at full speed. The .mov file is stored on NAND as a ~27Mbps 720p120 without any customizations, however when you share it the entire video is transcoded into a 30 fps format which preserves the slow motion effect.
The slo-mo mode is separate from the standard video recording mode, it’s the next stop on the dial in the new iOS 7 camera app. Video preview in slo-mo mode also happens at 60 fps compared to 30 fps for the standard video record and still image capture modes.
Camera preview frame rate, toggling between slo-mo and normal modes
Adding high speed camera modes to smartphones is a great step in my opinion and a wonderful use of increases in ISP and SoC performance. I would like to see Apple expose a 1080p60 mode as well. Technically 1080p60 does require slightly more bandwidth than 720p120, but I’d hope that Apple targeted both in the design of H6 and simply chose to expose 720p120 as it’s an easier feature to market.
Standard 1080p30 recording is also available:
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ShAdOwXPR - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
A7X win be a monster 130-150 GFLOPS that's Xbox 360 territory. Apple saying the A7 is a desktop class might be real with the benchmark numbers of the A7X...darkich - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
I expect the GPU on A7X to be even more impressive, approaching 200GFLOPS and easily beating the PS3/XBOX 360 in terms of graphical ability because of far more capable memory.It should be at least on par with the Intel HD 4000 at the fraction of TDP
AaronJ68 - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
I only scanned the review, as I have a few things to do this afternoon. But tonight, during the baseball game, I plan on detailed read-through. Thank you.On the other side of the coin, iTunes Radio just played a Ke$ha song ... so ... :)
Onemanbucket - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
Anand,I signed up here just to say that is the best, most educated review I have ever read. I was swaying between iPhone 5S and a Windows device (925) but your clear enthusiasm for the technology her has swung it.
Cheers.
Jumangi - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
The advanced SoC is one part of making a quality day to day phone. Apple sticking to a tiny 4' screen in 2013 should be called out as unacceptable from any enthusiast site like Anandtech.beggerking@yahoo.com - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
only 2 core...any multithreaded benchmark comparison vs typical Android quad cores?kinshadow - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
What made you guess the 6430 over the 6400? I don't see anything in the article that really points either way.Gorgenapper - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
Recently switched from an iPhone 4S to a Galaxy S4 Active. Two observations....with regards to what Anand said about iPhone users switching out of frustration:1) I would have been happy with a 4.5" ~ 4.7" screen on an iPhone. The IPS LCD panels on the iPhones are of the best quality and calibration in the industry, with the HTC One's screen coming a very close second place (not sure about the LG G2's, never seen one in person). But a 4" screen is too small, let alone the 3.5" screen on my iPhone 4S, and I just got sick of waiting for Apple to wake up.
2) iTunes
I can see #1 coming true when the iPhone 6 is up next, but #2 will never change.
darkcrayon - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
And you need iTunes for what on a daily basis? That's a plus IMO, I like having an easy option for disk based backups and sync to multiple devices. I use it on Mac OS X though.Gorgenapper - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
I'm on a pc.1) iTunes forces me to keep a separate folder structure for pictures, as I have many high res pics, zip files, rar files that would get synced regardless. I have to maintain the pics in this folder as well as those in my main picture folder(s).
2) Movies on the device are inextricably linked to those on the iTunes library, I can't manually get those movies off the device even if I accidentally wiped out the movies on my computer.
3) Kind of iTunes related (locked down filesystem), but the Camera Roll on my device stores the pictures in randomly-named folders, and they're all generically named IMG_****. It's a real pain to find and extract photos using Windows Explorer.
4) I can't use any free space on the phone to transport files like a USB drive (minor issue)
5) iTunes is slow to boot up, and the interface is not as intuitive (to me) as a simple Windows Explorer window.
6) I have often run into a problem where I manually delete a movie off my iPhone to make room for shooting video, then go to resync it and iTunes doesn't realize that the movie is missing - I have to unsync all the movies that are currently on the iPhone, then resync them all to get that movie back.