Galaxy S9's camera limited to 4K@60fps for 5 minutes: Here's why

Samsung has been betting high on the Galaxy S9’s camera as the USP of its flagship smartphone offerings for 2018. It’s one of the first smartphones to use a variable aperture mechanism in its camera, giving the user a guaranteed appreciable performance in most lighting conditions — no doubt the S9 managed to carve a record-breaking score of 99 out of 100 on DxOMark’s mobile photography rating scale. Therefore, it’s safe to say that Samsung’s Galaxy S9 is invincible in the photography department, isn’t it?

Well, No. The Galaxy S9 and S9+ may feature the revolutionary variable aperture system for having greater control over the amount of light reaching the sensor, but bogs down badly in one area — 4K video recording. We haven’t tested the S9 yet, but a report from Mashable has found a Reddit video, proving that the S9 can only record 4K videos at 60fps for a maximum of five minutes. There could be a possibility that this particular device was running on a demo ROM that wasn’t meant to be tested, like the other incident a few days ago where a demo unit of the S9 was tested for benchmarks. This is a bummer, considering the S9’s claimed USP to be a camera-centric smartphone. In comparison, the iPhone X allows users to record 4K videos at 60fps without any restrictions, which could pull buyers in its favour looking for a handy 4K shooter.

Samsung hasn’t stated the reason for this weird functionality. However, 4K video recording taxes the internals of any smartphone, which is why smartphone heat when the camera is used extensively. It could have been possible that Samsung didn’t want its S9 users to face unexpected shutdown due to overheating, which is why they have capped the 4K@60fps to a maximum duration of five minutes. For the average user, 4K recording for more than five minutes doesn’t happen very often, which means professional photographers could be the only group having issues with the limitation.

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