Samsung Engineers Finally Explain the APV Codec That Took Three Years in the Making
Samsung just pulled back the curtain on one of the most technically ambitious features on the Galaxy S26 Ultra.
In a newly published Samsung Newsroom interview, the engineers behind the APV codec, Advanced Professional Video, revealed how three years of development, cross-team collaboration, and a partnership with Samsung’s Memory Business drove its success.
These efforts turned the video standard into the most significant leap in mobile video creation since Apple’s ProRes.
What the Engineers Revealed About APV
The interview features developers from Samsung’s Visual Solution Team, Sunmi Yoo and Junseang Min, who built APV from the ground up. Their account makes clear this was no routine camera update.
APV is a video codec formally standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), meaning it is an open, royalty-free standard, not a proprietary Samsung lock-in.
Unlike conventional codecs such as H.265, which rely on inter-frame prediction, APV treats every frame as a complete standalone image.
For creators, this shift isn’t happening in isolation. Improvements at the operating system level, like those in Android 17 Beta 3, gradually remove long-standing bottlenecks in mobile editing, making advanced formats like APV far more practical in everyday workflows.
The engineers noted the biggest challenge was not standardization itself; it was commercialization.
Getting APV to run in real time on a mobile device, under heat constraints, at 8K resolution required over nine test cycles, validating data transfer stability across all recording resolutions.
Key Features of APV Revealed by Samsung
According to the Samsung Newsroom interview, the key technical advantages include:
- Visually lossless image quality even through multiple rounds of editing
- YUV 4:2:2 chroma subsampling for refined color reproduction
- More than 10% smaller file sizes compared to codecs at the same quality level
- UHD footage up to 6GB per minute, requiring a dedicated partnership with Samsung’s Memory Business to ensure stable high-speed storage
- Four built-in cinematic LUTs on Galaxy S26 Ultra for instant film-grade color grading
- Real-time 8K processing achieved through intensive thermal management and system-level optimization
Why This Matters More Than a Spec Sheet Feature
According to PhoneArena, APV is Android’s equivalent of Apple ProRes: both are intra-frame codecs treating every frame as a high-quality standalone image, but APV offers roughly 20% better storage efficiency and supports 12-bit color depth.
That gap is significant; ProRes has been the professional standard on iPhone since 2021, and Android lacked a credible alternative until now.
APV being open source is equally important: any Android manufacturer can adopt it, any editing software can support it, and the ecosystem can grow without Samsung controlling it.
As noted in the interview, Samsung collaborated with chipset makers, editing tool developers, and video player companies to build that ecosystem from day one.
For everyday creators editing on their phones, APV removes the bottlenecks that have long made professional mobile video frustrating. Combined with high-quality camera apps already available, the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s video toolkit is now genuinely competitive with dedicated production equipment.
What Comes Next for APV
The engineers confirmed Samsung’s ambition extends well beyond the Galaxy S26 Ultra. Their stated goal is for Galaxy devices to eventually be used in full film production environments, not just by YouTubers and influencers.
APV’s integration into Android as a platform-level standard through Android OS updates means other manufacturers can follow Samsung’s lead.
Vivo’s upcoming X300 Ultra has already been reported to include APV support, signaling that this is not a one-device feature but the beginning of a new standard for Android video.
Source: Interview Beyond the Shot
