Stunning Video Shot With Snapdragon 855 Processor
Qualcomm, manufacturer of the Snapdragon, has released a video last year showing off 4K HDR with a Snapdragon 855-powered smartphone. In fact, it is a prototype smartphone.
Snapdragon are the most popular line of smartphone processors. The film was shot at the Snapdragon Tech Summit in December 2018 in Maui, Hawaii – a long time in smartphone development. But this video seems to have slipped under my radar so I thought I’d share it today.
Better late than never!
The filmmakers were using a development platform prototype using Sony’s 22.5-megapixel IMX318 sensor – a sensor announced back in 2016.
But check out the dynamic range displayed in this video.
Even though they’re filming in bright sunshine, the sky doesn’t get blown out.
10 bit video
A normal 4K video captures 16.7 million shades of colour using 8-bit per channel (8 for red, 8 for green, 8 for blue, totalling 16.7 million possible combinations). But this HDR 4K video is captured using 10-bit and also uses the larger Rec. 2020 colour gamut. That means 1,073,741,824 possible colours, allowing it to capture more detail and tone.
What’s the difference between 8-bit vs 10-bit?
The Snapdragon 855 was Qualcomm’s flagship processor and is found in many devices, such as the ASUS ZenFone 6 and OnePlus 7 Pro. As well as 10-bit 4K Rec.2020 video, it also supports HDR with camera sensors up to 48-megapixels.
Snapdragon 865
Back in December 2019, Qualcomm announced their new flagship processor, the Snapdragon 865. Qualcomm says the CPU and GPU are 25-percent faster compared to the Snapdragon 855.
Qualcomm has made many improvements to the camera performance of the 865’s new Spectra 480 image signal processor (ISP). The camera co-processor now has a max processing bandwidth of 2 gigapixels per second. This means a smartphone camera can record up to 8K at 30fps or 4K at 120fps. The highest speed is still limited to 960fps at 720P, but instead of only in short bursts you’ll be able to record that speed indefinitely.
Overheating problem reduced
I frequently see people in forums complaining that their phone is overheating when filming at 4K 60fps. With the Snapdragon 865, lower clock speeds don’t require as much energy to perform the same processes as before. So this makes the Spectra 480 more thermally efficient.
The result is that your phone can run cooler even as it continues to shoot your high-res video. So, perhaps there will be less complaints. Or, more likely, complaints of overheating at 4K 60fps will be replaced by complaints of 8K 30fps overheating.
Qualcomm test phone
To shoot test videos like the one above, Qualcomm make a prototype smartphone for testers. The one provided last December looks like this:
