Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra’s secret weapon against iPhone in video recording

For over four years, Apple dominates the mobile video playback sector for professionals thanks to support for the ProRes format on its own iPhone.

While most smartphones rely on highly compressed codecs such as H.264 or HEVC, Cupertino’s option guarantees lossless files, which are incredibly easier to handle during editing.

Of course, this is a feature not suited for the average user, considering that a single minute of 4K footage can occupy more than six gigabytes of memory, compared with about three hundred megabytes for a standard video. However, for content creators, the technical advantage has always been undeniable.

Now, the Android universe finally has a concrete answer. With the launch of the new Galaxy S26 Ultra, Samsung introduces support for the APV codec (Advanced Professional Video), positioning itself as the direct and equivalent alternative to Apple’s system.

Galaxy S26 Ultra and APV, Samsung’s answer to Apple ProRes

APV is an open and royalty-free standard, officially certified as IETF RFC 9924. Its architecture is very similar to that of its rival Apple, as both rely on an Intra-frame system. This means editing software treats each individual frame as an independent image of the highest quality.

Traditional codecs, defined instead as Inter-frame, save space by expecting movement between the various frames; this calculation process, however, makes the subsequent editing phase extremely taxing for the processor. Working on the timeline of an editing program with an Intra-frame file results in a smooth and responsive experience, free from the classic slowdowns that afflict the most compressed formats.

The direct comparison and the challenges to success

On a purely technical level, the format adopted by Samsung boasts a significant efficiency advantage, requiring about 20% less space under parity conditions than the competitor.

It supports a color depth of 12-bit and a chroma subsampling of 4:4:4, although the specific hardware implementation on the Galaxy S26 Ultra stops at 4:2:2.

Even with the improved efficiency, the problem of gigantic file sizes remains: recording a single minute of 4K video at 30fps with the device generates a file of almost 7 GB.

Apart from file size, the main challenge for the new open standard is industry adoption. ProRes holds a competitive advantage of as much as fifteen years and enjoys universal software support.

Currently, Advanced Professional Video is natively supported only by the new Android 16 OS and by professional programs such as DaVinci Resolve 20.2, while older editing suites may require pre-transcoding or installing additional plugins.

A clear departure from the LOG profile

A key aspect to clarify concerns the distinction between this new codec and recording in LOG format, introduced previously by the company. The LOG format is essentially a color profile designed to maximize dynamic range, while APV is a true compression codec.

On the Galaxy S25 Ultra, for example, LOG footage was saved using the classic HEVC codec. This approach kept files compact and easy to archive on the phone, but preserved the Inter-frame nature, leaving unchanged the computational effort required by computers during post-production.

The current shift marks a clear improvement for professionals in videomaking. If, on one hand, the color profile served to capture lighting in a more flexible way, the new APV codec finally provides Android users with a high-quality open-source foundation for their productions.