The iPhone 5s Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 17, 2013 9:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone
- iPhone 5S
Video
Apple’s new H6 ISP brings with it a modernization of the video recording options for the iPhone 5s. The default video record mode is still 1080p at 30 fps, but there’s also a new 720p 120 fps “slo-mo” mode as well. In the latter, video is captured at 120 fps but optionally played back at 30 fps in order to achieve a high speed camera/slow motion effect. The result is pretty cool:
In the camera UI you can select what portions of the video you want to play back at 30 fps and what portions you want to leave at full speed. The .mov file is stored on NAND as a ~27Mbps 720p120 without any customizations, however when you share it the entire video is transcoded into a 30 fps format which preserves the slow motion effect.
The slo-mo mode is separate from the standard video recording mode, it’s the next stop on the dial in the new iOS 7 camera app. Video preview in slo-mo mode also happens at 60 fps compared to 30 fps for the standard video record and still image capture modes.
Camera preview frame rate, toggling between slo-mo and normal modes
Adding high speed camera modes to smartphones is a great step in my opinion and a wonderful use of increases in ISP and SoC performance. I would like to see Apple expose a 1080p60 mode as well. Technically 1080p60 does require slightly more bandwidth than 720p120, but I’d hope that Apple targeted both in the design of H6 and simply chose to expose 720p120 as it’s an easier feature to market.
Standard 1080p30 recording is also available:
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rchangek - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
They are releasing A1528 in China for China Unicom and I find it weird that it is not listed anywhere in the LTE support documentation.jasonelmore - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
Great review, 1st on the web to my knowledge. However there are a few points i want to note.1: Brian is your mobile guy, He knows a lot more than anand on this front. When i saw anand did this review, i cant help but think some fanboyism is taking place here, which could hinder credibility.
2: You say the iphone 5S GPU is more powerful than the GPU in the iPad 4 but looking at the charts, its on par/same as the ipad 4. A achivement none-the-less, but the results are well within the margin of error (1fps)
doobydoo - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
I don't think there are any question marks over Anands credibility and it's a little silly to make out that there are.jasonelmore - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
i'm just sayin, it makes me wonder if he's being 100% objective. and if i wonder it, then others will to. Bryan is a mobile author who reviews every mobile device to come through the labs, but when apple phones come out, suddenly anand takes the reigns from him. It's not like there are a ton of different phones out right now and they needed to spread the workload, anand could've at least let bryan do the 5C review, but nah, he wanted both.Mondozai - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
I remember Anand saying that Brian would get the iPhone 5s review, but apparently that changed.In my opinion, this is for the better. Anand knows more about CPU's and GPU's than Brian and the most significant change with the iPhone 5s was the A7 chip, together with the camera.
And, as you'll recall, Brian did a piece already on the 5s camera and cameras are sort of his speciality on smartphones, together with wireless.
Secondly, and I'm just speculating here, Brian is known as more of an Android guy. Could it be that he is already working on another review, like the Z1 or the Note 3? He can't do them all.
dugbug - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
That changed IMHO with the 64-bit CPU. Not sure why anand doing the review matters to you, but the guy is amazing with CPU and GPU analysis. Let Bryan do follow-up analysis.repoman27 - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
The embargo was lifted only one week after the reviewers got their hands on the devices, that's why Anand did these phones and not Brian. Regardless, Brian would have likely needed Anand to contribute on the A7 analysis, which was a crucial component of this review, and we would all still be waiting for a thesis from Brian.susan_wong - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
For the AT Smartphone Bench battery life test:It would be great to know how many total web pages were loaded for each of the 4S, 5 and 5S before the battery died.
Krysto - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
Seems like Apple got to 64-bit first only because they didn't redesign the CPU core, too, like everyone else is doing. They rebuilt Swift on top of ARMv8 and just tweaked it.ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6420/arms-cortex-a57..."Architecturally, the Cortex A57 is much like a tweaked Cortex A15 with 64-bit support."
"Similarly, the Cortex A53 is a tweaked version of the Cortex A7 with 64-bit support."
The 64-bit Cortex A57 and Cortex A53 are directly based on the existing 32-bit A15 and A7 respectively. That Apple's Cyclone is based on Swift really isn't a reason to dismiss it especially given how effective the results are.