Android 11 could finally let you record videos over 4G in size

Fun fact: Android phones can't record video files that are larger than 4GB in size. This could possibly change next year in Android 11, though, and to say it would be a welcome change is a huge understatement.

The limitation is getting more and more annoying as time goes by, because right now handsets capable of recording 4K videos at 30fps are basically everywhere, and that means big file sizes. 4K60 takes up even more space, and don't be surprised if the first devices with 8K recording capabilities show up on the market in the very near future.

With that in mind, the size per minute of video captured will only go up, which means that you'll fit less and less time into that 4GB. As it is right now, video recording won't stop after the current file that's being created has reached 4GB, the camera app will keep recording subsequent files. So if you keep going, even at 4K30, you may find that your Gallery has a bunch of different files stored for what you thought was one continuous recording. Not ideal, for sure.

The 4GB limitation was introduced in 2014, when the mobile world was much different in terms of hardware capabilities, and while it may have made some sense then, it definitely is just a step back in user experience right now. Google seems to have realized this.

The description of a new commit in the Android Open Source Project gerrit says Google will allow Android to "compose/mux files more than 4GB in size" in the next major version of the OS. That's Android 11, and if the company keeps to its previous time frames, the first beta should be out sometime in March.

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