8 megapixel mega shootout: Picture this

Video camera features

With video becoming extremely easy to share over the Internet, the popularity of video recording on mobile phones has grown immensely. So much so that not having HD capture on most recent smartphones is considered a downside.

Not all HD video is the same though - of the six phones we're testing, half shoot FullHD (each frame has 2 megapixels resolution, to put a number to it) and the other half makes do with 720p (~0.9MP).

What’s more, video resolution doesn’t tell the whole story about the quality of the footage. The field of view, the compression, the choice of codec, the auto focus modes and color rendition all take their tall and can easily make or break it.

To gauge the video recording capabilities of the six contenders, we analyzed individual frame quality in various aspects, the smooth playback and sound. We've prepared some crops from our shooters separated into two categories - 1080p and 720p.

1080p camcorders that have an option to record 720p were judged in both modes.

Different phones showed different strengths so the equal feature scores don't mean the phones have the same feature set. The HTC Titan had the most comfortable shutter key, which really helped its score. However, the iPhone 4S' native video stabilization works really well (but a volume control key is no substitute for a proper shutter key). The arc S did well too with an assortment of features and a hardware shutter key (which we really wish was more comfortable).

Video performance in good light

Resolution in good light. First up, we're looking at the resolution in well-lit videos. Here the iPhone 4S has a solid lead with the Galaxy S II and Sensation XE sharing the second place. The 1080p videos from the two Android phones look softer than the 4S videos. The Nokia N9 loses quite badly here with a lot of lost detail and the XE in 720p mode isn't much better.

Here are some crops to illustrate what we're talking about:

100% crops from video frames

Color rendition in good light. As far as colors go, things were pretty close. Weirdly, the Galaxy S II uses a different color balance for 720p shots - one that looks much better than the one used in its 1080p mode. The Sensation XE also changed the white balance when going down to 720p.

Noise and noise reduction in good light. Looking into how each phone handles noise, we judged the balance - keeping noise out, but without losing too much detail at its expense. The iPhone 4S did best here as did the Galaxy S II in 720p mode (that's pixel binning technology in action). The arc S left a good deal of color noise and loses this round.

Framerate and bitrate. We also looked into the frame rate and bitrate of each video - with sufficient light, all but the Nokia N9 hit their 30fps targets. The Nokia N9 does something weird, which we'll discuss later.

The iPhone 4S uses much higher bitrate than the rest (which is, in part, what makes its videos so good) but we wish it had a 720p option - memory fills up quickly with such a high bitrate. The Galaxy S II in 720p uses slightly higher bitrate than the Sensation XE in 1080p, which allows it to score the same in the resolution section.

Summary. Finally, here's a table that gives scores from 1 to 10 in each category for the six contenders:

The iPhone 4S came this close to a perfect 10 with the Galaxy S II trailing by some distance. A place where the S II lost points was color balance, which oddly improved in 720p, which was enough for it to win the 720p contest. As for 720p-only phones, the HTC Titan takes the top spot. The N9 lost points in the smoothness category as its videos hit only 24fps (that number went up when we switched off the lights, more on that in the next section).

Low light video performance

Resolution. Moving on to low light performance, the iPhone 4S again gets the highest marks in terms of resolution by quite a margin. The Galaxy S II holds on to second place when shooting in 1080p and the N9 comes in last (again).

As usual here are the crops to illustrate our findings:

100% crops from video frames

Color rendering. The Galaxy S II does better in 720p for color rendering and in the dark does even better than the 4S. Others, except the Titan, were close behind.

Noise and noise reduction. The lower resolution also changes the situation when it comes to noise reduction and the S II in 720p matched the 4S in this department as noise reduction without any reduction of reso0lved detail is a key advantage of the pixel binning technology. The Nokia N9 and arc S did very poorly in terms of noise.

Framerate and bitrate. With less light available, the framerate fell for most phones. The Sensation XE was hit the hardest dropping below the 24fps threshold. It startled us when the Nokia N9 actually upped the framerate to 29fps - we also looked into different lighting situations and it seems that the darker the frame, the closer the framerate to 30fps. We suspect it has something to do with the amount of detail it has to process.

Summary. To wrap things off, here’s a summarized scoring table with what we thought each smartphone deserves.

Even with the lights off, the iPhone 4S snatched first place with the Galaxy S II trailing again. It takes the consolation prize of being the top 720p shooter in the dark overall, but among the 720p-only phones the Titan (again) takes the top spot.