My first smartphone: the world is 144p

apefos

Until some days ago my cel phone was a sony ericson w200. bar design with number buttons, very small screen... great for mp3 and fm radio due to it's own design and because battery last all day long. I also used it's voice recorder a lot... and I never thought about getting a smartphone.

With the advent of wifi dslr, mainly the D5300, I started to think about to get a smartphone to see the live view from the camera when I get one with wifi, so I started a fun research...and I found a cheap used old model with enough screen resolution... and I got it for a low price...

Problems started when I did some attempts to connect using the 3G network, as the seller promissed me it would do, but it just got connection in 2G, and then I found it was a model from other country and it would never work in 3G in my city... so I went back to the seller and got a discount... good deal!

But then this became a "happy problem". Why? Because this makes me realize lots of people are still using 2G connections around the world and youtube just enabled the 144p around 80kbps for mobile slow connections and also pc slow connections.

I saw some videos in 144p in youtube using the 2G smartphone, and it was fun... I just remember the old days when internet was analog fixed phone lines with 24Kbps speed and online videos was just a dream.

(hey you, the three halloween batmen flying around... go away!!! Let me type... LOL ps.: did you run away from an atari emulator? Mouse over you!!!)

The 144p videos are just enough in the smartphone screen to understand and get involved with the video, to imerse in the history telling... and the fun thing: no need to worry about shallow dof...240p and 144p is so small to show shallow dof...

Oh God, if online videos are your goal, yes you must care about dynamic range, resolution, shallow dof, and so on, but this 144p thing just makes me realize the old school lesson: good script and good sound: that's what really matters!!!...

There are researchs on internet (you just need to google it) that shows the average internet speed for computers around the world is 5Mbps (this is enough for youtube 1080p streaming or 720p vimeo streaming, vimeo demands more bit rate than youtube). But 5Mbps are the average speed for big cities, most people outside the big cities are still using 1Mbps or 1,5Mbps for PC connections, just enough for 360p online streaming, and here, the 3G mobile connections are 1Mbps, 500Kbps or 256Kbps, and the 2G mobile connections keeps in 30-200Kbps floating... 4G is coming, 3Gis spreading, but it takes time.

So again: there are lots of things which matters much more than the gear: good actors, good script, good misanscene... clothers, scenarios... and good script and sound. In some 144p videos from youtube I could feel the importance of good actors, because even in 144p videos bad actors are revealed and made me feel it was a so amateur production, not convincing, unpleasant to see.

I showed to a female model I worked with two videos in 6400 iso from T3i camera, one was original, other was denoised and with film grain. I asked her: did you found any difference in the image? which one was more beautiful for you? And she answered: Oh sorry I did not pay attention to this, I was watching the people talking... but as I can remember... I saw no difference... And then I started fo feel frustrated about my image quality pursuing behavior... Story telling... Why worry so much about gear? I can do the same thing with that old GX88U and PV5500 VHS combo from the early 80s...

After sometime using a smartphone I got pretty addicted to it. It is much more pleasant than a computer for internet surfing... and I believe it is better than a tablet also. I just can carry it around to any place, lightweight, and I can put it inside my pocket!!! I am very satisfied with 800x480 screen, but God... there are 1920x1080 screens in expensive smartphones! I think people who work with online videos must take into account the main device for online video viewing are smartphones and 640x360 (360p) in a 5 inch screen is the resolution and size to consider for aestetics.

tosvus

Interesting read. It also reminds me of when I started college in '95, and they had state of the art video-conferencing system with other universities and colleges (it was actually neat as already back then they had whiteboards that when you wrote on it, it would show in the other universities). I believe the set up for it was a dedicated dual-ISDN connection at 128kbit/s. (they also had a t-something line, but that was used exclusively for the computers, so video wouldn't affect data and vice versa. Good 'ol days :)

apefos

Thanks!

are things developing fast these days? In 2020 will we look to the past years and realize internet and 1080p video are mature (and obsolet), but enough, and it happened fast or will we say: oh, no more waiting?

Sometimes i feel people are so anxious for tech improvements, inovations, and forget to look to the past to perceive how good are these days in terms of cine/video (including me). I am trying to start myself to focus more on scripts and forget gear for some time...

The 2G speed made to think about an idea for PV: to put a link to the last page in topic in the tittle to save time and bandwidth in mobile with slow connections.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

@apefos

Thing I want to understand is point of getting very old mobile. Price is not the reason now. In fact, even cheap Android phones have 720p screens, acceptable cameras and can shoot 1080p videos.

apefos

Hi VK,

Reason is it was the only cheap model i found wich can do 1080p 24p. Maybe you will ask: wich model is it? It is the LG P990. It can do 3G, but due to be a foreing model, the frequency for 3G does not work in my country. But there is another one called P990H wich works in 3G here. (Just saving people's research time). My bad not knowing this before buy... maybe PV members can share other models wich can do 1080p 24p also... It would be useful information...

apefos

I just forgot to say: why worry about 24p in a mobile device?

It is because i will shoot an entire feature film with it to prove gear is nothing and it will be a much more fenomenous success than el mariache and blair... LOL... just kiding... It is just another gear addiction behavior... LOL again...

apefos

I am completely addicted to the smartphone, hrlp..... lol

Ian_T

Welcome to the smartphone madness.

apefos

Thanks Ian,

I found myself today using it in the bus, in the mall, walking in the streets, i also perceived lots of people using besides me. I did not know this thing was so amazing. Play store is an endless apps garden... i just instaled the canon, nikon, sony and panasonic apps for dslr wifi, but could not try yet... gh2 and t3i are not wifi.

Now i understand everything makes sense, google maps, gps, social network, buying online, mobile version for websites are great, youtube app is fantastic, need to see if vimeo has an app also. The world is inside my pocket. This changed my mind about the concept of online videos. Internet made video available when you want, a big difference from tv, smartphones made the ''when you want'' real. And it is so pleasant to use... small, no fan noise, a wonderfull screen where you do not see the pixels due to high pixel density, qwert... if someday i can get something like the xperia z it will be a technology orgasm... this thing is making me to rethink the concept of video enterteinment and information. I am late, i know... There are lots of people getting involved with the combination of facebook and youtube, i need to pay more attention to this... my mind was so cinema theater way of creativity, too much old scholl for these days. The gear addiction is starting to loose importance and does not make zense so much, because 360p (640x360) resolution is pretty enough for these mobile devices, and why not for laptop , tablet and desktops also? As i said, good script, great sound and (this is important) excelent actors/actress are mandatory. I am even start to think the aesthetics for so small screens is a completely different concept comparing to the theater big screen and television sets... my mind is blooming...

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