The Samsung S20 is already packing some pretty immense features and hardware. However, the ability to shoot 8K video is easily one of the most attention-grabbing. The work of 4K is only just getting into full swing, but there are 8K displays and TV’s starting to filter into the wider world. Being able to shoot in 8K is going to look amazing on a 4K monitor too, but it’ll also be fairly future proof.
We’ve run into issues shooting at 4K with today’s tech, as it does make even some of the most expensive cameras quite hot. As a result, shooting at 8K will cap at around five minutes. I don’t doubt it’ll take a lot of power from the new phones to record and store all that data. You’ll find the device caps at 5 minutes for this reason, at least for now.
The footage is also “limited” to 24 fps, but we do know that the chipset can support 30 fps, so perhaps that’ll patch in via a firmware update at a later date.
The 8K footage is going to take up some serious space though, with a minute needing around 600MB, or around 3GB for a full five-minute clip. A few snaps of your cat doing something at this resolution and you’ll be wanting for more storage. Then again, with Samsung offering a 512GB model of the Galaxy S20, and support for 1TB microSD cards, maybe storage isn’t that big of an issue these days.
It’s just a shame these new phones are going to cost a few limbs.
