Click for update – It was a somewhat unsettling discovery when we learnt that the UK would be receiving Samsung’s new flagship: the Galaxy S4 sans its fancy Octa-core processor, but in truth the shortcomings are far less of an issue than you might think, particularly when the quad-core chip being supplied by Qualcomm might actually add a feature you won’t see on the Samsung Exynos 5-powered S4 available elsewhere in the world.
According to GSMArena who spotted the claim on Qualcomm’s own site, the new Galaxy S4 may be the first handset ever to offer full 1080p HD video recording at 60 frames-per-second. Presently rival flagships can offer Full HD video at a more traditional 30fps or in some cases 60fps video at a lower resolution 720p: such as with the HTC One, but despite using the same Snapdragon 600 chipset, the Qualcomm-powered S4 will be able to bump that resolution to produce some of the smoothest Full HD video recording on a mobile device ever.
Camera technology has been a huge focus in the flagship smartphone race of late, with the HTC One’s UltraPixel camera toting a bunch of new features and the Sony Xperia Z being the first to push HDR video, but what we’re not sure of is the legitimacy of Qualcomm’s claims. The Qualcomm-based Galaxy S4 will tote a 1.9GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 320GPU so we don’t want to rule the 60fps out, but if it is true then why haven’t Samsung’s similarly specced rival devices employed the same feature?
We’ve reached out to Qualcomm to confirm or at least clarify this claim and we’ll let you know what they say.
Update: Following on from yesterday’s suspicions, Qualcomm has now corrected the quoted frame rate on their Samsung Galaxy S4 product page to state that the 13-megapixel camera shoots Full HD video at 30fps and not 60fps as was previously, incorrectly stated. Perhaps the Galaxy Note 3 will be able to offer this feature or we’ll have to wait until next year’s handsets bring that feature to market.
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