Qualcomm Shows First 8K Video Recording on Snapdragon 865

Back in December, Qualcomm unveiled its flagship Snapdragon 865 SoC that will power premium Android smartphones this year. It is expected that Samsung will be the first company to release Snapdragon 865 devices with the launch of Galaxy S20. Qualcomm did not share any specifications at the time, but there was a hint that the chip would bring 8K video support. The chipmaker now shared a video shot using the Snapdragon 865 on a prototype smartphone in 8K resolution, making 8K recording possible on smartphones.

Qualcomm showcases 8K video recording capability on Snapdragon 865

Qualcomm said in a blog post that the shoot took place in November 2019 at various locations in Arizona. The chipmaker stated that the hardware used was the Snapdragon 865 chipset paired with a 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor on a “prototype smartphone”. Qualcomm, however, clarified that the video was shot with pre-production hardware. Thus, the end result is slightly noisy and granular, which may also be caused by YouTube compression or actual hardware.

In addition, 8K video recording Qualcomm has promised to bring a new set of camera features for the smartphone. The company’s flagship Snapdragon 865 SoC is equipped with a new Spectra 480 ISP. This computer vision-image signal processor (CV-ISP) can capture professional image quality and process up to 2 GHz per second.

The ISP 480 brings in 8K video recording featuring 33MPs per frame. The 865 allows unlimited 960FPS slow motion recording. It also captures 200MP photos and can simultaneously record 4K HDR videos and 64MP photos. Other features include Dolby Vision video capture which is popular in the film industry.

The first batch of smartphones powered by Snapdragon will be Samsung’s Galaxy S20 series. The top-end Galaxy S20 Ultra has been deferred to bring 8K video recording support with a 108K camera sensor. The real capabilities of the processor will be known in the coming days as Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event is going to happen on 11 February.

Confirmed Smartphone with Snapdragon 865 SoC Listed

Apart from the Galaxy S20 series, other phones such as Xiaomi Mi 10, Mi 10 Pro, OnePlus 8 & 8 Pro, Redmi K30 Pro, Oppo Find X2, Realme X50 865 and many other phones are expected to come with Snapdragon 865 SoC. The Snapdragon 865 does not come with an integrated 5G modem, so we will see phones with flagship Qualcomm SoC launching in India.