The iPhone 6 Review
by Joshua Ho, Brandon Chester, Chris Heinonen & Ryan Smith on September 30, 2014 8:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone 6
Video Quality
At a high level, video recording seems to be mostly similar. Both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 6 continue to rely on EIS for video stabilization, both seem to use somewhat similar optics and sensors, and both can only shoot 1080p video. However, the details are really where we see improvements in the iPhone 6. For starters, the iPhone 6 now has 1080p60 video support, which is definitely helpful for improving spatial resolution and general performance. There's also 720p240 slow motion video, which is an addition to the 720p120 video that we saw in the iPhone 5s.
| Video Encode Settings (Approx.) | ||||||
| iPhone 5s | iPhone 6 | |||||
| 1080p30 | 17 Mbps High Profile H.264 | 17 Mbps High Profile H.264 | ||||
| 1080p60 | - | 27 Mbps High Profile H.264 | ||||
| 720p120 | 27 Mbps High Profile H.264 | 31 Mbps High Profile H.264 | ||||
| 720p240 | - | 42 Mbps High Profile H.264 | ||||
As you can see, there's really not a massive difference in encoding bitrate, at least for the standard video record settings. However, even casual examination shows just how big a difference there is when comparing video from the iPhone 5s to video from the iPhone 6.
While the YouTube compression is likely to make it hard to see whether the iPhone 6 really has better video quality, when viewed at full resolution with Quicktime it seems that there is some level of improvement, but this could be due to the smaller field of view that is used when compared to the iPhone 5s. This tighter FOV also seems to be part of the reason why the stabilization is more effective than before. At various points in the video, it's quite obvious that the iPhone 6 is also benefiting greatly from PDAF as we see seamless transitions throughout the video and consistently better focus while the iPhone 5s is locked from the start and would require multiple taps to refocus the video.
1080p60 brings significant improvements to temporal quality, as capturing fast motion is noticeably more fluid when compared to 1080p30. Video stabilization is also retained, which makes 1080p60 an easy choice when capturing fast-moving objects.
As with the iPhone 5s, the original video on NAND is saved to play back at either 120 or 240 fps, but on the phone and when uploaded to social media the slow motion versions play back certain parts at 30 fps. As far as I can tell, there's relatively little difference in the image quality between the two modes, but this advantage is unlikely to hold when in lower light situations as the frame rate inherently caps the exposure time.
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Toss3 - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
Just because some people question the integrity of a website claiming to do objective measurements of a device's performance, doesn't mean that they are idiots. Quite the opposite in fact. It would be great if Anand changed the way they do their battery measurements (they do not reflect reality, and aren't comparable to other sites' results (should already be enough for them to question the way they do it)), and also dropped the browser benchmarks from the CPU performance section (browser performance != cpu performance, unless both phones are running the exact same version of the browser on the same platform (we know that chrome on iOS isn't the same as Chrome on android etc.)). And measuring the display brightness when setting the brightness manually also isn't ideal, as Samsung limits the peak brightness on their devices for those occasions, which means that the true peak is a lot higher (setting the brightness to automatic solves this issue(think quite a few people prefer auto to manual)).Toss3 - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
Forgot to add that it would be great if they included a reference for the photo and video comparisons (D800 + color correction). There's also a big discrepancy between the time the photos were taken (around 8pm for all androids and 10pm for the iPhones (why is that?)).tralalalalalala40 - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
To make it harder for the iphones under lower lighting to make the test more fair to droid phones.Toss3 - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
Lighting conditions should always be equal for all devices, and sometimes 10pm can be brighter than 8pm.tralalalalalala40 - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
Samsung has to limit the brightness or else the pentile pixels will burn out quickly...How should they do the battery measurements? Apple has the most efficient SOCs and are destroying default QComm chips everyone is using.
Toss3 - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
Automatic brightness and normal usage would be best (playing a game for 2h - calling someone for 1h - browsing the web for 1h - installing 30apps, etc.). Being on both wifi and lte throughout the day.Toss3 - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
And the Exynos 5433 would like to disagree - currently on the launch firmware and already outscoring everything else (Geekbench scores over 1300/4300 and gfxbenchmark/sunspider numbers that match those of the iPhone 6). The 3DMark numbers are also higher than those of the iPhone 6.taehoon - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
I want to know iphone6/6+ NAND performance test is based on 64 or 128GB.Because It is extremely higher than any other devices
Toss3 - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
Why are you still running browser benchmarks when testing the CPU? You'd think that a site like Anandtech would know better (the difference between Samsung's own browser and Chrome is huge http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=557... How about running something like 3D Mark's physics benchmark instead? Basemark is a lot better than browser-based ones, but do we know if the benchmark performs equally on both platforms.tralalalalalala40 - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
People commonly use the web browser on the device to browse the internet with their phone. Their other tests cover the 3D physics (which the iphone doesn't excel at, since most if the users of this phone aren't simulating physics problems).iPhone 6 is destroying the competition at the moment, samsung just dropped 10% in profits, they have to go back to making RAM, this might be their last high end phone release on android, they need to move to tizen.