The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge Review

Video Performance

Now that we’ve gotten a good idea for how the Galaxy S6’s camera performs in a range of situations for taking photos, we can turn our attention to video recording quality. Even if a camera performs well at taking images, video recording can often expose weaknesses in areas such as encode blocks in the ISP. In addition, it’s possible to see how well an OEM can handle post-processing on a real-time basis when each frame has to be done in around 16 to 32 ms rather than a single frame in a few hundred milliseconds. This also tends to level the playing field somewhat as an OEM can’t force longer frame exposure times without affecting frame rate in a very visible manner.

We’ll start with a relative static video to get a good idea for video quality without severe camera shake and with relatively fixed focus.

In the 1080p30 mode, Samsung has opted for H.264 high profile encoding with a bit rate of 17 Mbps. For 1080p30 video, this bitrate seems to be around where most OEMs are staying to balance image quality and file size.

Viewing the video shows that there isn’t any sort of distracting macroblocking going on or any of the usual artifacts. The field of view appears to cover most of the sensor as well which should help with improving detail and overall video quality if one doesn’t zoom in.

Interestingly enough, this video is already exhibiting a combination of oddly smooth and jerky pans that is likely due to hitting travel limits on the OIS. I suspect that this behavior is part of the reason why Apple didn’t enable OIS in video on the iPhone 6 Plus, as those that are unfamiliar with how the stabilization works would likely be frustrated by the effect.

The Galaxy S6 also records at 256 kbps, 48kHz two channel AAC audio, which is much higher than the 96-128 kbps rate that I’m used to seeing on most smartphones. The audio recorded definitely seems to be quite clear and crisp with no real distortion.

Moving on to the 1080p60 mode, we can see that Samsung is opting to go with the same video and audio encode settings, but at a 28 Mbps video bit rate to handle the higher frame rate. Subjectively it appears that this mode comes with a drop in video quality, which is a bit disappointing as 1080p60 shouldn’t come with any real compromises in image quality to fit with user expectations other than an increase in file size to deal with the higher frame rate. Other than this, motion is fluid and video remains of usable quality which is good.

For slow motion, Samsung opts to use a 48 Mbps video bit rate while keeping all other video and audio settings identical at a 720p resolution with a 120 fps frame rate. Unfortunately, Samsung seems to be running into either a self-imposed limit or some other limitation at the hardware level like camera output bandwidth, ISP processing limits, or encode block limits. The result is that slow motion video ends up looking more like 480p than 720p video.

On the other end of the spectrum, Samsung has included 4Kp30 support with a 48 Mbps video bit rate and identical video and audio encode settings as all of the other video settings. It seems that there aren’t any issues with quality here, which makes me wonder why there are issues when using the slow motion mode as the bit rate is similar while the number of pixels processed per second is higher. Video is amazingly high resolution here, but I’d still love to see a 4Kp60 mode as the logical next step with the use of HEVC encoding to also make for fluid motion. There’s also a 5 minute limit as with most phones that can record 4K video, presumably to avoid taking up excessive amounts of storage.

The final video test I did here is to simply test the stabilization, focus stability, and exposure accuracy of the Galaxy S6 by walking down a short path and attempting to switch between focusing on near and distant objects which are either strongly shadowed or well-lit in the scene. Here we can see that the sound quality of the video recording remains high in quality, but there are some advantages and disadvantages of the Galaxy S6 when comparing to the iPhone 6. The Galaxy S6 is clearly better-stabilized than the iPhone 6, but there’s a great deal of jerky movement in the video rather than a consistent shake due to the OIS hitting a travel limit and resetting.

It also appears that the auto focus isn’t sensitive enough to figure out what part of the scene I’m attempting to focus on, as it tends to avoid changing focus if possible. It’s a bit surprising in this case as Samsung’s IMX240 sensor also has PDAF, which means that it should be possible to cleanly focus in on the closest object within the center ninth of the frame. Samsung’s auto-exposure mechanism also attempts to keep the sky from blowing out at the end of the video, which causes almost everything else to end up quite dark compared to the iPhone 6.

Overall, in all of the videos and photos there’s also a consistent trend of Samsung favoring oversaturation of color which often isn’t accurate, but I suspect the average consumer will prefer such tuning. In general, the Galaxy S6’s camera is a solid step up from the Galaxy Note 4, and can even beat the iPhone 6 in some situations, but taking everything into account the camera is equal to the iPhone 6 Plus in quality at best as it trades blows in daytime and low light situations.

Although Samsung has drastically improved the speed of the camera, camera application, and the gallery application, they’re still fighting a fundamental sensitivity disadvantage by using 1.1 micron pixels. Given Samsung’s dominant position in the Android industry, I can’t help but wonder how much better things could be if they elected to go back up the pixel size scale.

At any rate, the only issue that Samsung really needs to fix at the moment is the obvious haloing around high-contrast detail in photos. The fact that I can do this sort of detailed comparison between the iPhone 6 and the Galaxy S6 should speak volumes about just how good this camera actually is, compared to any Galaxy phone before the Galaxy Note 4. When it comes to flagship Android phones, the Galaxy S6 has the best camera, and there’s really nothing else to be said.