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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
195 Comments
View All Comments
synaesthetic - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
Isn't that the whole point of using Android? I mean, it's kind of a trainwreck when OEM skins and carrier bloatware gets involved. If it wasn't for custom OS flashing I would probably be using a Jolla phone or hanging onto the old Nokia N9. Or just using an iPhone. I mean, if I can't tweak and customize, then my problem with iOS largely disappears.snake2332 - Wednesday, October 22, 2014 - link
That literally is the first thing I do, but I'm not average. However, do average consumers read anandtech? I think not, so there is some relevance to arguing against uhuznaa's statement since a fair amount of people won't be using the stock ROM at all.tralalalalalala40 - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
So you want him to root the phone to get a proper test. That sounds like an accurate way to model the average consumer use. hasnake2332 - Wednesday, October 22, 2014 - link
Who cares about the average consumer here?seanlumly - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
This review is good, but lacks discussion (or mention, for that matter) about Gear VR, a very significant first-step development in the world of mobile phones. If nothing else, VR may have an effect on the decisions surrounding critical hardware found in future mobiles.theduckofdeath - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
I noticed that too. the Gear VR is actually one the toys I'm looking forward to the most over the next few months.seanlumly - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Me too! And while I'm looking forward to it, I'm confident that it is a bold and important step for the industry. It potentially adds an alternative to large-screen TVs that have become standard, and open up new ways of sharing information. More importantly, the mobile phone is so ubiquitous that this lowers the cost of VR significantly, and puts it into more hands.Such a thing deserves serious mention in a review of this device as its a serious development.
theuglyman0war - Monday, October 20, 2014 - link
if this is a petition for the interest in the future coverage of vr and phones strapped to my face with rubberbands then count me in pleeeze ( me to )firstever - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
From the brightness tests, the display is 331 nits. How is the readability in the daytime? What does the auto boost do to make the display brighter?theduckofdeath - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
With a contrast ratio of nearly 1,000,000:1 it has a dynamic range in the region of 1000 times better than any LCD display.That gigantic difference means that those miniscule differences in the specs sites like Anandtech always loves to focus on are pretty much irrelevant. I think it was GSM arena who made an visual comparison of outdoor readability on all major brands a few months ago, and even though the GS5 had around half the brightness of the "best" competitors, the GS5 was a lot more readable outdoors.
The adaptive brightness increased the outdoor brightness of something like 100 nits on older Samsung devices, I guess this is in the same region.