This may be the killer camera feature for 2022 iPhones and Galaxy phones
This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.
If you follow flagship phones these days, you have probably noticed that there are really two major things that make or break a flagship: battery life and camera. And most of the talk just so happens to be around cameras. Phones have become the main cameras for the vast majority of people and that's only natural, after all, we all care about how photos of our loved ones look like.
And iPhones and Galaxies have pushed hard into improving that in all sorts of ways. The big focus has obviously been improved low light performance with night modes and phones that can now take good looking photos in conditions where even professional photographers with their fancy cameras would need a tripod and a bit of preparation.
Phones have learned to capture long exposures and do that smartly, without the need of a tripod, and photos actually look incredible. So our pictures now look great and all that jazz, but not all camera aspects have improved so quickly in the past few years.
One camera feature in particular doesn't seem to have changed at all.
Phones have learned to do a lot of camera tricks, but not this one
That feature is video, but not just any kind of video: slow motion video.
High quality slow motion video might just be the next frontier for phone makers that have previously been held back by insufficient performance power. See, 4K video requires a fast and efficient processor, that is why many budget phones don't have a 4K60 option at all, and those who have like the Pixel 5a... well, let's just say that they don't handle it very well (the Pixel 5a overheats and stops recording 4K60 video in a matter of less than 3 minutes).
So 4K video has been a challenge, but while budget phones are still struggling with it, flagships have mostly figured it out. You can not only record 4K video these days, you can record 4K HDR and even ProRes, and so on.
This looks really EPIC
However, one feature that has stubbornly not made it in the mainstream flagships by Samsung and Apple is 4K recorded at 120 frames per second. Those of you who know a thing or two about videography can probably already see where I'm going with this: it's all about INCREDIBLY GOOD LOOKING slow motion. But it requires a lot of processing power. 4K60 is intense, 4K120 is A LOT more intense.
Thankfully, it's not impossible and we have seen other phone makers adopt it: the most recent Sony Xperia has it, just check out this epic slow-mo from our friends at GSM Arena:
This may not improve your TikToks, but if you have any aspirations to make beautiful videos, it's just a game-changer.
And I think that it's time. It's time that we got quality slo mo. The iPhone in particular has been stuck with the same unimpressive slow motion (yep, 720p240 and 1080p120) since the iPhone 6s! Yep, that phone was released more than 6 years ago, in 2015! And we have had no progress since then.
So it's about time for the mainstream players to catch up and finally deliver the slow motion quality we all deserve on a flagship phone.
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