A8 Chip in iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus Capable of Playing 4K Video

[TMay]

The "sales data" argument is another commonly-used argument in support of whatever Apple has now. It was part of why "720p was good enough" before Apple embraced 1080p: "Sales of iPhones says that people don't want 1080p".

The only way "sales data" can apply to a question like this is if there was a fair choice. If there was an iPhone 6 "as is" and an iPhone 6 with 4K, and the bulk of the crowd went with one or the other, then "sales data" would tell us something. Otherwise, all sales data tells us is that people want the "whole" bundle of benefits of the iPhone bad enough to tolerate anything it might lack that they also wish it had.

I wanted a 1080p TV long before Apple rolled one out. But I owned both 720p models because the "whole" of the TV made it worthwhile to own one. My "sales data" point would have thoroughly argued that 720p was the desired choice. Sure I could have gone with Roku or others that were already 1080p just as there are some Android options with 4K now, but the "whole" bundle of benefits justified putting up with the lack of 1080p in those TVs.

Another take: just before the launch of the iPhone 6, "sales data" overwhelmingly supported that all iPhone buyers wanted the 5s, 5, 4 or earlier. Per "sales data", apparently no one wanted an iPhone 6 because no one bought one. Apple went against what "sales data" implied and launched a new model anyway.

Still another take: I think OS X is great. But "sales data" shows that Windows computers thoroughly dominates the marketplace at better than 9:1. So per "sales data", it's obvious that Windows is far superior to OS X. Nevertheless, I personally favor OS X. So even though the sales data overwhelmingly implies Windows is better than OS X (certainly >90% of the world's population that own computers can't be wrong), I buck that data myself and choose to own OS X.

All that said, it could be that iPhone buyers don't want 4K in their iPhones... perhaps 1080p is good enough (just as "720p was good enough" when iPhones were capped at 720p). But I bet if Apple rolls out a 4K iPhone, the masses will jump all over it and- much as they did when Apple quit 720p and shifted to 1080p- gush about the greatness of it while dropping all previous arguments in support of the former Apple norm.

One thing that I've noticed in all of these years hanging out around here: when Apple shifts, so shifts the arguments of it's fans. Apple is never called out as wrong for shifting per the piles and piles of logic and illogic slung to support what was Apple's previous stance. Instead, the fans just shift right with Apple. Anything not built into Apple stuff is "abomination", "99% don't want", etc until Apple builds it in and then it's "must have", "I'm already in line", "shut up and take my money".

Doubts? Step back a few months before bigger-screen iPhones were launched and see comments about bigger pants pockets, man purses, fragmentation, and "Apple would never". Step back about a year and read NFC threads: how useless it was, how insecure it was, how much "we" prefer plastic, etc. Step back a few years to TV threads when it maxed at 720p: "the chart", "streaming 1080p will crash the internet", file size issues, "until everyone everywhere has more bandwidth", etc. Step back to iPad 1 without an iSight camera and learn why having a front-facing camera on an iPad made absolutely no sense. In all of those instances, "sales data" supported such arguments. But when Apple shifted on each, "sales data" was soon supported each shift too... as it will when 4K iPhones come to market.

Please note that I discriminate between "want" and "must have"; where a "must have" is a loss of sale.

Apple lost a lot of sales over a few years from lack of some, or many features. Of that there is no doubt. Yet Apple is stronger than ever, and, almost all of those OEM's that did offer a wide range of features are not.

Why is that?

Might if be that those features in themselves aren't the deciding factor, or if they are, there are other brands.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I've never said 4K is a "deciding factor". Why iPhones sell so well is the whole bundle of benefits. Nor am I saying people are NOT buying iPhones because it lacks 4K now. What I am saying is that it would be great to have 4K in iPhones, Apple's implementation of 4K would likely yield something superior to Apple's implementation of 1080p and all iPhone buyers that care about shooting video with iPhones would gain something. Even those who are completely happy with 1080p could probably shoot at something less than 4K or downsample to 1080p from a higher quality master... just as anyone who might still be in the "720p is good enough" camp can do the same now.

The implication of the "why is that?" question is the same as the "sales data" argument- just flipped around. iPhone buyers do not have a choice to buy an iPhone model with this particular feature. If they did, both the "sales data" or "why is that?" implication would be applicable. However, implying that since people are generally choosing the iPhone as is rather than non-iPhones as a vote against 4K is not valid. Apple is NOT giving buyers a choice to get the many other benefits of iPhones in an iPhone with 4K. So people buy iPhones and settle for not having whatever features other phones might have that they want BECAUSE they find enough value in the rest of what they get with an iPhone.

Again, if "sales data" or "why is that?" argument is valid, when Apple does roll out 4K and thus shifts against "sales data", the crowd who doesn't want 4K shouldn't buy iPhones with 4K. But we both know they will... and probably gush about getting to shoot 4K with their new iPhone. Sales will set records and thus the new "sales data" will suggest iPhone buyers did want 4K and/or any other features not in current versions of iPhones that will arrive with that one.

 

[Keirasplace]

Wishful thinking. Also see: full Bluetooth (do we have full BT support now, some 7 years after the iPhone 2G? Of course not) full NFC.



Again: check the facts before posting. Also, pay close attention to blind phone camera shootouts like that of PhoneArena. In which very often those phones equipped with, according to you, "poor optics", beat the cr@p out of the iPhone 6/6+. Like the Note 4 in the above blind(!) roundup.



Again and again:

1. I've linked to an EOSHD article on the problems of H.265 encoding, the prospects of current desktops / chipsets receiving support for it. Currently, and in the next 2-3 years, playing back native H.265 streams, no matter the resolution, will be far more problematic for most users than playing back native H.264 4K streams. That is, the iPhone 6 will surely not get a H.265-enabling update in the next year or two. If at all.

2. the H.264 you're so keenly attacking is producing excellent results in the consumer-grade and -priced GH4, the LX100, the FZ1000 at 100 Mbps only. That is, H.265, while it, in its practical, current implementations (NX1) does save some 30-40% of storage at the same image quality, is not a must for 4K encoding.

Quoting a shill site as a proof Note 4 beats the pants off the Iphone 6+ is not improving your credibility...

DXOmark a much more neutral review site that does more thorough testing (and tests DSRL' too) has the 6+ and 6 slightly beating the S5 (82 versus 79). (They haven't reviewed the Note 4, but the only difference between the two is the use of OIS). The main advantage of the 6,6+ is autofocus which is slower on the S5. Both are very good smart phone cameras.

The only difference between the S5 and the Note 4 is OIS. So, your telling me that this would make the Note 4 go way past (alleged "beat the pants off") the 6+ despite the fact it doesn't make a lot of difference in the performance of the 6+ versus the 6 (which has electronic stabilization).

----------

I've never said 4K is a "deciding factor". Why iPhones sell so well is the whole bundle of benefits. Nor am I saying people are NOT buying iPhones because it lacks 4K now. What I am saying is that it would be great to have 4K in iPhones, Apple's implementation of 4K would likely yield something superior to Apple's implementation of 1080p and all iPhone buyers that care about shooting video with iPhones would gain something. Even those who are completely happy with 1080p could probably shoot at something less than 4K or downsample to 1080p from a higher quality master... just as anyone who might still be in the "720p is good enough" camp can do the same now.

The implication of the "why is that?" question is the same as the "sale data" argument- just flipped around. iPhone buyers do not have a choice to buy an iPhone model with this particular feature. If they did, both the "sales data" or "why is that?" implication would be applicable. However, implying that since people are generally choosing the iPhone as is rather than non-iPhones as a vote against 4K is not valid. Apple is giving buyers a choice to get the many other benefits of iPhones in an iPhone with 4K. So they buy iPhones and settle for not having whatever features other phones might have that they want BECAUSE they find enough value in the rest of what they get with an iPhone.

Again, if "sales data" or "why is that?" argument is valid, when Apple does roll out 4K and thus shifts against "sales data", the crowd who doesn't want 4K shouldn't buy iPhones with 4K. But we both know they will... and probably gush about getting to shoot 4K with their new iPhone. Sales will set records and thus the new "sales data" will suggest iPhone buyers did want 4K and/or any other features not in current versions of iPhones that will arrive with that one.

IF they could do it and offer "something better than 1080P", don't you think they would have done it already? In theory, looking only at the sensor size they could... Ah, but Apple is very careful about not compromising the experience when they up their specs. What if shooting high quality 4K is not so simple as it seems.

BTW, only "must have" points will have a big impact on sales. Apple buyers rarely buy their phones on specs. They buy their phones because of dozens of intertwined factors.

 

[Menneisyys2]

Quoting a shill site as a proof Note 4 beats the pants off the Iphone 6+ is not improving your credibility...

Well, actually,

1. PhoneArena is pretty unbiased and is far being from a "shill" site.
2. Even if they were anti-iOS and pro-Android, they couldn't have manipulated the voting in the blind camera tests as that has been done in the comments, which can be counted and checked by anyone.

DXOmark a much more neutral review site that does more thorough testing (and tests DSRL' too) has the 6+ and 6 slightly beating the S5 (82 versus 79). (They haven't reviewed the Note 4, but the only difference between the two is the use of OIS). The main advantage of the 6,6+ is autofocus which is slower on the S5. Both are very good smart phone cameras.
The only difference between the S5 and the Note 4 is OIS. So, your telling me that this would make the Note 4 go way past (alleged "beat the pants off") the 6+ despite the fact it doesn't make a lot of difference in the performance of the 6+ versus the 6 (which has electronic stabilization).

1. I didn't state the iPhone 6/6+ is cr@ppy. (Actually, if you read my other posts here at the Alternatives section, you can easily see I have, in many occassions, stated the iPhone has superior panorama and HDR to that of the Note 4 - an example post.) I only stated that, as opposed to what you stated ("poor optics" - see #196), it has some great optics. So good that it could easily beat the iPhone 6/6+ in a blind test.

2. only Exynos-based N4's have the same sensor as the S5. Snapdragon 805-based ones have the latest-and-greatest Sony IMX240, highly praised by this article too. The IMX240 is stated to be superior to the Samsung sensor. The difference may be because of this.

IF they could do it and offer "something better than 1080P", don't you think they would have done it already? In theory, looking only at the sensor size they could... Ah, but Apple is very careful about not compromising the experience when they up their specs. What if shooting high quality 4K is not so simple as it seems.

If they put (or at least enabled) into their handset everything they could, then, today, we'd have full NFC and Bluetooth support. Which would require a plain firm/software support. That is, the lack of 4K doesn't necessarily mean Apple just couldn't find out how to make it better than 1080p.

1. again, the Note4 (and some other phones) produce excellent 4K footage easily better (or at least equal) in many / most respects than their 1080p footage. That is, even in small-sensor, limited-CPU, limited-battery, problematic-to-heatsink platforms like mobile phones 4K can be implemented well.

2. their not having 4K may just be a result of their

- resting on their laurels
- wanting to drive people to upgrade to the probably 4K-enabled 6s next year
- whatever.

Nevertheless, the tech is here and has been implemented by many of the other manufacturers excellently.

----------

Please note that I discriminate between "want" and "must have"; where a "must have" is a loss of sale.

Apple lost a lot of sales over a few years from lack of some, or many features. Of that there is no doubt. Yet Apple is stronger than ever, and, almost all of those OEM's that did offer a wide range of features are not.

Why is that?

Might if be that those features in themselves aren't the deciding factor, or if they are, there are other brands.

Again: citing sales figures doesn't help in a discussion only discussing each device's merits. Let me point out that simple-to-use phones will always sell orders of magnitude better than "geek" ones (even if the latter have tons of additional functionality) requiring a lot of technical knowledge. This has been seen with other manufacturers too, not only with Apple - for example, with Nokia.

----------

I've actually shot video with recent mid range DSLR cameras ($800-1000 dollar range we decent, but not top level glass) and often the quality of the video does not correlate absolutely with the quality of photo. As the video goes on, focus points, luminosity, contrast, color of light, position (subject and filmer), angular speed, and many other factors, can change and the camera can either adjust as the shot goes on, or simply discard the change as irrelevant. On a quick shoot, the camera must adjust all those things in a fraction of a second.

You forgot the most important one: the way the sensor is read out, which, even in an otherwise high-end camera & lens combo, can break everything. This is by far the biggest problems with 95% of MILC's and DSLR's. Particularly those of:

- Fujifilm (all Fuji MILC's shoot abysmal video, while they are arguably the best APS-C crop cameras and their lens lineup is also astonishingly high-quality)
- Canon (most of their crop DSLR's shoot abysmal video)
- Oly

The video footage of all these cameras contain a lot of aliasing / moire, which is much more detrimental to the final video quality than the ability to, say, quickly focus, supporting motorized zooms or steplessly change the aperture. The latter features don't even need to be used in a set-up scene, while aliasing errors will still crop up in every single frame.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

IF they could do it and offer "something better than 1080P", don't you think they would have done it already?

No, Apple moves at their own pace. They could have put a front-facing iSight camera in that first iPad- they even had a space there for it- but they chose to leave it out. They could have gone 1080p long before they did with TV3, when pretty much everybody else had long-since embraced 1080p. They could have gone bigger-screen iPhones years ago (even Woz said they should have done it years ago). Etc.

Apple moves along when they want to move along. There are other compact devices available from competitors that can shoot 4K. So just as others had gone 1080p while Apple still clung to 720p, others are proving that Apple could go there now. That they haven't doesn't mean it's impossible- just not something that Apple has wanted to roll out yet.

BTW, only "must have" points will have a big impact on sales.

This crowd was generally very much against screens bigger than 4" until the rumors piled up that Apple was going bigger. Such screens were definitely not "must have" to this crowd. This crowd argued "720p was good enough" before Apple embraced 1080p. 1080p was not "must have".

I think Apple gets it's sales whether they deliver "must have" or not. NFC waited several years in iPhones. 1080p waited several years. Bigger screens came much later than what was possible. But the big impacts on sales came anyway. You might argue that Apple delivered other "must haves" in the years leading up to those- and they probably did- but that argument would not make 4K any less (or more) "must have" than any of those.

 

[Iconoclysm]

That's the most ridiculous logic I've read in this thread.

Since no one really knows what WALTR is doing, how can you say that the product that exists on the iPhone after going through WALTR is even a 4K format and not something much less?

Big deal if the iPhone can take a 4K data file and process it down to something that displays on a relatively low-res iPhone screen. IT'S DIGITAL DATA. It's manipulating the one's and zero's. I can take a 1080p blu-ray file on my PC and show it in a 320x200 window. So what? I, for one, am not that impressed if the point of the story is that the iPhone iOS software can read a 4K file format.

The very fact you think it's ridiculous only shows how little you know about how this works.

 

[Lictor]

I've actually shot video with recent mid range DSLR cameras ($800-1000 dollar range we decent, but not top level glass) and often the quality of the video does not correlate absolutely with the quality of photo. As the video goes on, focus points, luminosity, contrast, color of light, position (subject and filmer), angular speed, and many other factors, can change and the camera can either adjust as the shot goes on, or simply discard the change as irrelevant. On a quick shoot, the camera must adjust all those things in a fraction of a second.

Yes, that's because it's SLR - it's meant to be operated through the lens. If you're shooting video, you're in fact disabling most of what makes a camera a SLR: it has to do focus like a low-end compact instead of using very fast phase detection, it cannot use it's dedicated exposured and white balance chip... Actually, in all automatic mode, a smartphone is probably better in video than a DSLR in all but lens and sensor quality...
These things don't really matter, because pro do mostly use manual mode and focus when shooting a video.

There's distinction between image quality and automatisms. You can do without all the later, including optical stabilisation.

 

[hsnsky]

It has begun. Like I said, we already had the Roland Garros tennis championship in 4k. We will have the soccer World Cup in 4k. And this will be broadcast over TNT. And yes, this means 4k encoding and broadcasting in nearly realtime...
And I guess other european countries have similar experimentations.

That's what I was afraid of. That still makes it a little more than 3 years out (2018 World Cup) for primetime .

 

[Keirasplace]

Yes, that's because it's SLR - it's meant to be operated through the lens. If you're shooting video, you're in fact disabling most of what makes a camera a SLR: it has to do focus like a low-end compact instead of using very fast phase detection, it cannot use it's dedicated exposured and white balance chip... Actually, in all automatic mode, a smartphone is probably better in video than a DSLR in all but lens and sensor quality...
These things don't really matter, because pro do mostly use manual mode and focus when shooting a video.

There's distinction between image quality and automatisms. You can do without all the later, including optical stabilisation.

Might have been true some years ago, but nowadays there's a pretty decent dedicated processor in there. They're pushing the latest midrange Cameras 70D (About $1000 body) as top notch in video and they're much better than those in the past (the one I just talked about). Might even buy one.

Video on a smart phone is miles and miles below what you see on top end cameras or dedicated Canon film equipment C100 and C300 (3000 and $12000 MSRP) no matter that they have enough MP for it (and these things are NOT filming in 4K btw). Tried one only one (the C300) and oh my god!!!

 

[Menneisyys2]

Might have been true some years ago, but nowadays there's a pretty decent dedicated processor in there. They're pushing the latest midrange Cameras 70D (About $1000 body) as top notch in video and they're much better than those in the past (the one I just talked about). Might even buy one.

Too bad the 70D, while having pretty good autofocus, still loses in a very important area: moire / aliasing. (That's because Canon uses line skipping in all their APS-C digital cameras.) This is why it produces significantly more moire-ridden image than even Nikon's low-end D3300. (Of course, the Nikon has much slower AF.)

This is what I referred to above. You can have a fast (bright) lens on your Canon DSLR - no matter, it'll still have a lot of moire / aliasing, resulting in awful results if you don't use a tripod and don't carefully examine for example the clothes of the actors for possible moire generation before shooting. And no-tripod shooting is absolutely out of question.

Video on a smart phone is miles and miles below what you see on top end cameras or dedicated Canon film equipment C100 and C300 (3000 and $12000 MSRP) no matter that they have enough MP for it (and these things are NOT filming in 4K btw). Tried one only one (the C300) and oh my god!!!

If you also meant the middle-priced D70 as "top end" (or any other Canon / Fuji / Oly DSLR / MILC, even including $1500 ones like the E-M1 or the X-T1), then, you're absolutely wrong. Most(!!) smartphones produce way better IQ than these DSLR's / MILC's because their image is devoid of moire / aliasing. Of course, if you do need shallod DoF / excellent low-light performance / full manual control / non-28...40mm fixed equiv lens, you must go the dedicated video shooter route. If you don't need shallow DoF or any of the above only delivered by bright-lens, large-sensor cameras (incl. DSLR's and MILC's), you can get more than adequate video image quality from a phone. Without moire / aliasing, which, again, are the single biggest problems with most of today's DSLR's / MILC's video mode.

 

[Rare455]

Got to agree. Also, this mean that the option is there, but we can't really use it. So what good would it do now? How it's gonna make a difference in the current devices?

This news really isn't about the difference we'll experience in the current iPhone 6. This is simply a very strong hint that reveals what the next Apple TV from Apple will hold. They will most likely use the A8 chip, which as you can see here, can hold 4k videos(except that it's useless since the screen isn't adapted yet), which means that we can soon stream 4k content using the new Apple TV.

 

[BeSweeet]

it surely couldn't, not even with native (mp4 / m4v / mov) hardware decoding. the first phone to offer ok-ish 1080p support was the 3gs. with lower (under 10 Mbps) bitrates. Higher-bitrate (e.g., BluRay-grade, for example, 48 Mbps) videos could only be decoded & played back by the iPhone4+ / iPad1+ via hardware decoding.

(I've publsihed tons of articles and posts on this in this very forum so I know what I'm talking about.)

Which is interesting because I remember on several occasions playing true 1920x1080 video files on an iPhone 2G with its native video player. If I had an iPhone 2G now, I can do it again.

 

[Menneisyys2]

Which is interesting because I remember on several occasions playing true 1920x1080 video files on an iPhone 2G with its native video player. If I had an iPhone 2G now, I can do it again.

Are you sure

- it was the native player, that is, you played back the video in the stock "Videos" app, after synchronizing the video from your desktop? It's not possible to synch full HD movies via iTunes to the iPhone2G/3G/3GS or the iPad1/iPad2 running iOS3.2.x (for the iPad1) / iOS4.

- it was H.264 Full HD? H.264 Full HD decoding is not supported by the chipset.

 

[BeSweeet]

Are you sure

- it was the native player, that is, you played back the video in the stock "Videos" app, after synchronizing the video from your desktop? It's not possible to synch full HD movies via iTunes to the iPhone2G/3G/3GS or the iPad1/iPad2 running iOS3.2.x (for the iPad1) / iOS4.

- it was H.264 Full HD? H.264 Full HD decoding is not supported by the chipset.

Playback was done via iFile for jailbroken devices. The full HD video file was simply transferred over via AFC2 and played back using iOS's standard media player APIs.

 

[mtbdudex]

Now with the A9 chip in the 6s and 6s plus will the older ones be software upgraded for 4K??

 

[BeSweeet]

Now with the A9 chip in the 6s and 6s plus will the older ones be software upgraded for 4K??

For playback? They should already be able to play 4K video fine.

 

[TechGod]

I think that means the A8 will be in the Apple TV very soon... And the apple TV will have a major upgrade, probably a full App store.

You were right.