No 4K Video Recording Feature on New Lower Midrange Android Smartphones, What Are Your Thoughts on This?

Hello, everyone! Mark of TechPinas here! How's everyone? I hope you and your loved ones are doing well.

I just want to pick your brain on a smartphone scene issue that I've been seeing and thinking about lately.

I noticed that some smartphone brands are starting to remove 4K video recording capabilities on their lower-midrange Android smartphones (PHP 10,000 to PHP 19,000 price echelon). This feature used to be outright available even on many entry-level models.

Kudos to Cherry Mobile for including 4K Video Recording as a key feature of their Cherry Mobile Aqua S10 Pro, which is priced at only PHP 7,990.

I'm not sure if manufacture did this because of chipset limitations or if they noticed that consumers in that price bracket don't really shoot 4K videos. Perhaps, they are doing this to push consumers who regularly use that feature to just buy upper-midrange or high-end to flagship-level models.

With this development, let me ask you these questions (especially for those who regularly buy lower-midrange Android handsets):

Are you OK with this move by some brands? 

Do you think they should keep 4K video recording feature on their lower-midrange models? 

Do you even shoot 4K videos? 

Do you think brands should go beyond this and include 4K video recording capability not just on the main cameras at the back but also the front-facing cameras of lower-midrange handsets?

Personally, since this feature used to be available in the said smartphone price bracket, I would hope that companies could continue offering it as a value-added feature.

Although 4K videos take up a lot of space in your internal storage and can take longer to upload on Youtube if your connection is slow, shooting in 4K has many benefits, especially for aspiring video content creators.

For one, if you usually upload FullHD videos on Youtube or Facebook, you can crop on your 4K raw video files when editing and not lose quality on exported clips.

Shooting in 4K is also a great way to future-proof your clips, especially now that we are seeing more and more TVs and laptops with 4K and even 8K screens or displays available in the market. Remember when HD videos used to look so clear on our older devices? Now, they are starting to appear blurry because of the 1080p or 4K resolution of our screens.

But hey, these are just my thoughts! I'd love to hear yours. Feel free to leave a comment below or message me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram at @techpinas. Cheers!

UPDATE as of March 9, 2022 11:16PM: Here are some comments that I got from some friends and readers regarding this topic.

"For me as a regular smartphone user, I don't even use 4k in recording videos. HD and Full HD [are] enough for me." - Lemuel Aduca

"4K is ultimately a nice-to-have for me. I even have it in the phones I’m using and I barely use it unless it’s for review. I just don’t see the need to use it when not a lot of people can actually view stuff in 4K. It still sucks that a feature that was once there is now gone and it lowers the value of a phone. I honestly don’t know if this will even make a big dent in phone purchases. I even think people should hold off on buying phones when fuel price hikes are nuts." - Jullian Robin Sibi of Utterly Techie

"[I don't look at 4K recording when buying phones. I only look at RAM and storage.]" - Pepi de Leon

"Hi Sir Mark! I believe this is related to product value costing. Camera capabilities are greatly related to the processor. Some manufacturers let go of the 4K video recording on processor selection in lieu of 5G Capability coupled with increased pixel count to maintain the production cost to profit margin. Most consumers and manufacturers want to ride the bandwagon effect of 5G while maintaining the pricing by letting go of unused features. More so, nowadays, better 5G Capability with a better camera lens [can be more attractive] than an unusable 4k video recording." - Lloyd Dee

"My problem with phones, even before, was the addition of pretty useless 2MP cameras just so they can call it Quad or Triple camera set-up. They're removing 4K video on phones so that they can justify selling you more expensive phones that do have this feature. It's like a marketing gimmick now that adds price to a mediocre phone. I don't use 4K a lot though as I am satisfied already with 1080p." - Raphael Briones

"I don't think it's a problem to remove this certain feature for low-mid tier phones because I personally feel like it should be for those "video enthusiasts". Along with this, it can help cut costs for the companies to further improve on features that could greatly affect the general market. Features such as better ram, more storage, and other common features are things that I could think of on the top of my head." - JP Tirona

"For handheld companies to provide cost-efficient and high class phones, they need to balance out the specifications of phones depending on what is the need of their consumers." - Christian Jerome Fernandez