Apple confirms September 10th iPhone event

[JAG87]

Well, if he was referring to recording video 1080p60 at 30Mbps, I can see why that would be wanted, but most DSLRs dont even record at that. Expecting that in the 5s is a reach. 720p120 is a gift, but I doubt thats anywhere near 30Mbps. I was just curious how he would use that feature on the 5s.

Of course I was referring to recording... lol

60 fps increases detail a lot by virtue of simply shooting twice as much information at you, and 30 Mbps is the bare minimum to encode 60 frames at 1920x1080 decently, in fact 50-60 Mbps would be better.

And I'm pretty sure the iPhone 5S is able to record that. After all 720p120 is almost the same workload as 1080p60. It's just a matter of making the mode available to third party apps through the API, which apple mentioned would be available.

 

[eelw]

60 fps increases detail a lot by virtue of simply shooting twice as much information at you, and 30 Mbps is the bare minimum to encode 60 frames at 1920x1080 decently, in fact 50-60 Mbps would be better.

You want this from a camera phone???? Are you also disappointed the 5s doesn't make julienne fries?

 

[JAG87]

You want this from a camera phone???? Are you also disappointed the 5s doesn't make julienne fries?

I don't understand, I already shoot 1080p30 at 50Mbps with FilmicPro on the iPhone 5 and it's flawless, why couldn't a SoC like the A7 handle 1080p60?

 

[MrX8503]

Of course I was referring to recording... lol

60 fps increases detail a lot by virtue of simply shooting twice as much information at you, and 30 Mbps is the bare minimum to encode 60 frames at 1920x1080 decently, in fact 50-60 Mbps would be better.

And I'm pretty sure the iPhone 5S is able to record that. After all 720p120 is almost the same workload as 1080p60. It's just a matter of making the mode available to third party apps through the API, which apple mentioned would be available.

I don't think anyone is questioning that its better quality. You're asking for a feature from a phone that some DSLRS don't even have. On top of that few phones if any do 720p120.

You must really be fun at parties. "Only 3 kegs? Meh..."

 

[Childs]

Of course I was referring to recording... lol

60 fps increases detail a lot by virtue of simply shooting twice as much information at you, and 30 Mbps is the bare minimum to encode 60 frames at 1920x1080 decently, in fact 50-60 Mbps would be better.

And I'm pretty sure the iPhone 5S is able to record that. After all 720p120 is almost the same workload as 1080p60. It's just a matter of making the mode available to third party apps through the API, which apple mentioned would be available.

hahaha, well 99% of all DSLRs that do video cannot do that. Consumer camcorders that can do 1080p60 max out at 27Mbps. My 2-3 month old Lumix G6 (m43) cannot do 1080p60 at 50Mbps (27Mbps is the max as well I think). Maybe its partially to protect the old ass GH3, but still, recording and playing 1080p60 on mobile devices isn't trivial, especially when you crank up the bit rate. On the 5s, the phone has to be capable of recording and playing that back, and I doubt the 5s will even play 720p120 at 120fps. More than likely, 30fps, or 60fps max. Bit rate will be under 30Mbps, probably 27Mbps, which is what most cameras max out at. If it could do more, I'm sure it would, but thats asking a lot for a phone.

If you dont care about quality, the phone could do 1080p60 at a relatively low bit rate, like 15Mbps, but low bit rates at higher resolutions defeats the purpose of high resolution and high frame rate. More than likely when 1080p60 at 30Mbps+ is commonplace on m43 and dslrs, you will see it on phones a little while after. But if there is a phone that actually does it, let me know. I think the smallest device I can think of is the latest GoPro, and it doesnt go higher than 30Mbps at 1080p60.

 

[JAG87]

I don't think anyone is questioning that its better quality. You're asking for a feature from a phone that some DSLRS don't even have. On top of that few phones if any do 720p120.

You must really be fun at parties. "Only 3 kegs? Meh..."

Most DSLRs also don't do 1080p30 at 50Mbps, that doesn't stop the iPhone 4S and 5 from doing it. Yea that's right I said 4S. This isn't a hardware limitation, it's more of a choice from the manufacturer.

hahaha, well 99% of all DSLRs that do video cannot do that. Consumer camcorders that can do 1080p60 max out at 27Mbps. My 2-3 month old Lumix G6 (m43) cannot do 1080p60 at 50Mbps (27Mbps is the max as well I think). Maybe its partially to protect the old ass GH3, but still, recording and playing 1080p60 on mobile devices isn't trivial, especially when you crank up the bit rate. On the 5s, the phone has to be capable of recording and playing that back, and I doubt the 5s will even play 720p120 at 120fps. More than likely, 30fps, or 60fps max. Bit rate will be under 30Mbps, probably 27Mbps, which is what most cameras max out at. If it could do more, I'm sure it would, but thats asking a lot for a phone.

If you dont care about quality, the phone could do 1080p60 at a relatively low bit rate, like 15Mbps, but low bit rates at higher resolutions defeats the purpose of high resolution and high frame rate. More than likely when 1080p60 at 30Mbps+ is commonplace on m43 and dslrs, you will see it on phones a little while after. But if there is a phone that actually does it, let me know. I think the smallest device I can think of is the latest GoPro, and it doesnt go higher than 30Mbps at 1080p60.

I don't think you realize that encoding at higher bit rate is actually less demanding than low bit rate... there are less calculations the codec has to go through to reach the lowest possible SNR. Decoding on the other hand is more demanding at higher bit rates, but for all intended purposes the difference is negligible with the hardware we have today.

I am willing to bet that the 5 can do 720p120 too, but that Apple just left it out as a feature for the 5s. Think about it: the A5 can do 1080p30 easily, and the A6 SoC is twice as fast, so it can very likely crunch 1080p60. That's more demanding than 720p120, so you do the math.

 

[MrX8503]

Most DSLRs also don't do 1080p30 at 50Mbps, that doesn't stop the iPhone 4S and 5 from doing it. Yea that's right I said 4S. This isn't a hardware limitation, it's more of a choice from the manufacturer.






I don't think you realize that encoding at higher bit rate is actually less demanding than low bit rate... there are less calculations the codec has to go through to reach the lowest possible SNR. Decoding on the other hand is more demanding at higher bit rates, but for all intended purposes the difference is negligible with the hardware we have today.

I am willing to bet that the 5 can do 720p120 too, but that Apple just left it out as a feature for the 5s. Think about it: the A5 can do 1080p30 easily, and the A6 SoC is twice as fast, so it can very likely crunch 1080p60. That's more demanding than 720p120, so you do the math.

Where are you getting that the 4S can do 50mbps? I see 24mpbs.

 

[Eug]

I don't think you realize that encoding at higher bit rate is actually less demanding than low bit rate... there are less calculations the codec has to go through to reach the lowest possible SNR.

A lot of implementations do lower bit rates at mediocre quality. That's why you see lower end hardware achieving high resolutions and frame rates at lower bitrates without dropouts.

 

[Childs]

I don't think you realize that encoding at higher bit rate is actually less demanding than low bit rate... there are less calculations the codec has to go through to reach the lowest possible SNR. Decoding on the other hand is more demanding at higher bit rates, but for all intended purposes the difference is negligible with the hardware we have today.

What are you basing this on? There is no real difference when using a bit rate of 1Mbps or 20Mbps, as far as CPU load. Encoding time is longer at 20Mbps on a test I just ran, which is what I would expect (20% longer). Going to 1080p60 is 54% longer. Did you read this somewhere?

The hardware they are using to do the encoding and decoding can only do so much, especially for a phone SoC. Battery life is probably the deciding factor when deciding what features make it into the iPhone.

I am willing to bet that the 5 can do 720p120 too, but that Apple just left it out as a feature for the 5s. Think about it: the A5 can do 1080p30 easily, and the A6 SoC is twice as fast, so it can very likely crunch 1080p60. That's more demanding than 720p120, so you do the math.

hehe, but then it could have been a new feature for the 5c! Although interestingly 720p120 from the same source as my above tests does take longer to encode than 1080p60. But that could be because the source is 1920x1080, not 1280x720. I can tell by the progress that 720p120 to 720p120 will take significantly less time than 1080p60 to 1080p60, but its getting to be a little late to stick around to see it finish. Besides, I would need to know if the iPhone is internally doing any scaling when its capturing to know if that matters. I'm thinking that the hardware Apple is using for the encoding is just under what is required for 1080p60 at the bit rate they want to do, which is why they won't officially do 1080p60. Anyways, the point of these tests was that more bit rate doesn't not equal less encoding resources, unless maybe you are doing lossless h.264. I haven't really looked into how it works, but there is almost no CPU usage when capturing at 1080p60 at 70Mbps.

 

[Eug]

It's possible that Apple's chip has the oomph to accomplish this task, but Apple's software isn't quite up to snuff just yet to do it 100% reliably.

It reminds me of Apple TV 2. Initially it could only decode 720p reliably, and indeed even if you hacked it to use a different decoder 1080p decoding was really problematic. However, later on Apple updated the software and it decodes QT 1080p just fine at up to moderate bitrates, if the right H.264 profile is used. Some third party decoders also work fine, but others don't, for 1080p.

This is actually an issue for dSLRs. The processors in cameras are specifically built to meet certain tasks, so that higher end cameras typically have higher end processors as well. 10 fps full quality shooting for example was simply impossible on some of the lower end cameras. The same is true for anything below the iPhone 5S. Burst shooting is available on all iPhone devices AFAIK, but it's like 2-3 fps on most of them.

 

[JAG87]

What are you basing this on? There is no real difference when using a bit rate of 1Mbps or 20Mbps, as far as CPU load. Encoding time is longer at 20Mbps on a test I just ran, which is what I would expect (20% longer). Going to 1080p60 is 54% longer. Did you read this somewhere?

The hardware they are using to do the encoding and decoding can only do so much, especially for a phone SoC. Battery life is probably the deciding factor when deciding what features make it into the iPhone.

Encoding at higher bit rate takes less time than lower bit rate, this is simple mathematics. You gotta realize that the more you lower the bit rate, the more quantization methods the codec has to do to maintain a decent SNR. If the bit rate is higher, the codec can stop after a certain amount of compression because going further yields no results anyways, so it diverts the data rate to another area of the matrix.

hehe, but then it could have been a new feature for the 5c! Although interestingly 720p120 from the same source as my above tests does take longer to encode than 1080p60. But that could be because the source is 1920x1080, not 1280x720. I can tell by the progress that 720p120 to 720p120 will take significantly less time than 1080p60 to 1080p60, but its getting to be a little late to stick around to see it finish. Besides, I would need to know if the iPhone is internally doing any scaling when its capturing to know if that matters. I'm thinking that the hardware Apple is using for the encoding is just under what is required for 1080p60 at the bit rate they want to do, which is why they won't officially do 1080p60. Anyways, the point of these tests was that more bit rate doesn't not equal less encoding resources, unless maybe you are doing lossless h.264. I haven't really looked into how it works, but there is almost no CPU usage when capturing at 1080p60 at 70Mbps.

Yes, you can never compare if your source resolution doesn't match the output because at that point you're also interpolating which is additional resources.

Anyways, you have to realize that you cannot compare offline encoding with real-time encoding, they are not done the same way. Offline encoding is tuned with emphasis on efficiency rather than speed, whereas the encoding happening in the iPhone is real-time is tuned much more emphasis on speed by sacrificing quality and efficiency. It wasn't until the A6 SoC in the iPhone 5 that the H264 was enabled to use CABAC, and the bit rate was able to be lowered to 17 from 24 with practically the same results. This is why it's important to throw more bit rate at the image than it would be required, because real-time encoding has most quality/efficiency quantization settings turned off to maximize speed. So when you look at your 17 Mbps 1080p video from the iPhone 5, please don't think it's as good as a 17 Mbps 1080p video that you can encode with Handbrake. It's not. And bit rate makes a huge difference in quality in speed-tuned real-time encoding.

Trust me when I tell you that if the A5 can do 1080p30, the A6 can do 1080p60, and the A7 shouldn't even break a sweat doing it.

 

[Eug]

Teardowns of iPhone 5C and 5S

 

[Eug]

Carriers and US retailers will have almost no gold or silver iPhone 5s inventory tomorrow

Every carrier source we’ve talked to and every US retail outlet we’ve heard from has told us that they are only getting in Space Grey iPhone 5s devices for sale.

Further up the line, we’re hearing that a few white/silver and even fewer gold iPhone 5s deliveries are trickling in the warehouses but hardly enough for wide dispersal by retail stores.

---

No mention about the Apple Stores though, but I suspect it's similar.

 

[fjmeat]

Teardowns of iPhone 5C and 5S

thats pretty cool

 

[TridenT]

Carriers and US retailers will have almost no gold or silver iPhone 5s inventory tomorrow

Every carrier source we’ve talked to and every US retail outlet we’ve heard from has told us that they are only getting in Space Grey iPhone 5s devices for sale.

Further up the line, we’re hearing that a few white/silver and even fewer gold iPhone 5s deliveries are trickling in the warehouses but hardly enough for wide dispersal by retail stores.

---

No mention about the Apple Stores though, but I suspect it's similar.

No gold, no buy.

 

[Aikouka]

I am willing to bet that the 5 can do 720p120 too, but that Apple just left it out as a feature for the 5s. Think about it: the A5 can do 1080p30 easily, and the A6 SoC is twice as fast, so it can very likely crunch 1080p60. That's more demanding than 720p120, so you do the math.

720p120 support is most likely enabled by the hardware codec. Sure, Apple could probably support it on the CPU, but that would gobble up battery power like no one's business.

 

[TridenT]

Ordered my gold iPhone 32GB with extended warranty. Lines at stores were way too long as I was driving past them today.


It'll get here in October. Whatever. No care.

 

[Eug]

720p120 support is most likely enabled by the hardware codec. Sure, Apple could probably support it on the CPU, but that would gobble up battery power like no one's business.

Yup. Apple has a new image signal processor in the A7. I was alluding to that earlier when I was talking about the dSLR and point-and-shoot camera ISPs. They purpose-build these chips to accommodate certain features, which is why higher end cameras usually have higher end ISPs in them.

 

[Eug]

Saw the grey and silver today. The grey looks very good. Better than the previous black. I still prefer silver though. No gold to see.

Fingerprint sensor works great if the demo app is any indication. Feels very natural.

I thought I'd like the blue 5C but I didn't as much as I thought I would. Most of the colours look like bright summer pool toys. I actually liked the yellow the best. Blue was more like bright turquoise and the red was orange pink. They felt well built though. OS was also very responsive.