Android 11 OS To Let Users Record Videos Bigger Than 4GB

Did you know that Android limits the video file size on its platform? Yes, currently there is a file size limit for a single video recorded on an Android phone and it cannot exceed 4GB. This might change soon, as Android 11 is expected to increase this limit. However, as of now, there is no information on the size limit.

The 4GB video file size limit was introduced in 2014 with the launch of Android 5 Lollipop. In the last few years, smartphones have gone under a tremendous change, and now we have phones that are as powerful as gaming consoles and PCs.

One of the reasons for this limitation was the writing speed of the storage module used on phones at that point in time. Now, most of the flagship phones use UFS 3.0, which is as fast as an NVMe SSD and can write data in Gigabytes per second.

This lets Android smartphone makers make better smartphones, especially in terms of videography, where one can easily record professional-grade videos with almost no compression on smartphones.

This Means Two Things

In a way, this will let users record longer videos in a single stretch, especially at 4K resolution with either 30/60FPS. However, this also means that smartphone makers can make use of newer video codecs to improve the video quality, which means, a phone might take more than 4GB space for short video footage. Even now, recording a longer video on the Pixel 4 will record multiple videos of size 4GB, if the file size exceeds.

As this is purely a software-based feature, already existing smartphones might also get this feature with a software update. However, that will be in discretion with the phone maker whether to enable this feature or not.

As expected, the Pixel series of smartphones will be the first set of devices to get this feature with the Android 11 rollout by mid-2020 and phones from OnePlus and Samsung might also get this feature at a later date.

Via