Galaxy Nexus video performance tests – does it play 1080p?

If you are a long-time reader you might remember the Samsung Galaxy S / Vibrant Video Performance Tests from a couple of years ago.

Now it’s time for a new phone, and new tests! The Samsung Galaxy Nexus sports a gorgeous 4.65 inch AMOLED with 1280x720p resolution. The Galaxy S had amazing playback capabilities for its time, will the Nexus top it?

Stock player woes

The stock player on the Nexus is very poor, much worse than the one on the Galaxy S. It does show promise by playing h.264 in both 720p and 1080p in MKV container (albeit without sound) but there is no support at all for SD content (divx/xvid).

Video below:

Without sound, there’s not much functionality here, let’smove on!

MX Player to the rescue!

MX Player is a free (ad-supported) video player available on the Android market. It allows you to harness the power of the included hardware decoder and use the CPU (a.k.a “software”) decoding for codecs that are not available natively.

Check the video below for playback tests:

Using this player, almost all formats that are available today can be played back – even 1080p content works great, as long as it doesn’t have a DTS audio track. I could never make DTS work properly, not even in 720p mode. If anyone has gotten this kind of container configuration running, let me know in the comments!

The showdown in table form (MX Player):

Video	Container	Audio	Resolution	Result
xvid	avi	mp3	SD	OK
xvid	avi	ac3	SD	OK
h264	mp4	AAC	720p	OK
h264	mkv	AC3	720p	OK
h264	mkv	DTS	720p	Only plays in S/W
h264	mkv	AC3	1080p	OK
h264	mkv	DTS	1080p	Crashes
H264 (High bitrate)	mkv	AC3	1080p	Crashes

Conclusion

While the stock player is a step down from the Galaxy S, the playback capabilities with third party software, especially the ability to play back 1080p h.264 files is a step up from the last generation. HD content simply looks great on the Nexus!

Further reading

If you speak Swedish you are in for a real treat – Swedroid has an amazing in-depth review of the Nexus. Highly recommended reading!

The Thomas Karlsson Project – Part 1

Last weekened marked an important step forward in the development of The Thomas Karlsson Project, a series of short films concerning different aspects of professional bicycling that me and my friend Thomas have had in the plannings for almost two years but due to different circumstances have never gotten off the ground. Finally – last weekend we started filming! The result was a whole bunch of great filler shots for the future, and hopefully we’ll be expanding upon the film(s) on a more frequent basis from now on. We’re not sure ourselves how these will turn out in the ends, but we agreed to try to make the best movies possible with as small of a budget as can be. We’ve made plans to build a steadycam, and I’m currently trying to build a homemade studio lamp, with a lot of help from Stephanie. If it turns into anything usable, I’ll make sure to post a DIY tutorial on it! Keep a look out for more information, as I will be updating on the status of the project as it develops.