Edge already supports WebM and VP9 in the insider builds (on desktop).
Most Intel GPUs have had hardware or hardware-assisted VP9 decode since Jan 2015. PowerVR GPUs (Imagination/Apple) have had it since 2014, but I'm not sure if that exact variant is inside the iPhone SOCs.
Lack H265 support is likely due to licensing costs, despite the advantages the codec provides. Just about everyone is staying away until the cost and terms become more reasonable.
Apple is willing to eat the costs for FaceTime because of how good H265 is - It's a serious competitive advantage.
They removed all mention of HEVC/h.265 from their iPhone specs page when the second patent fee was announced, so it's not clear they're still using/paying for it.
> Apple is willing to eat the costs for FaceTime because of how good H265 is - It's a serious competitive advantage.
Does it really matter so much? 4G speeds are now up to 450 Mbps. Nowadays it's pretty rare to see (stationary) 4G downstream below 50 Mbps and upstream below 10 Mbps.
Fixed networks are even faster, broadband speeds are generally in 100 - 1000 Mbps range in most of the world.
H.264 is just good enough for modern network performance [1]. I'd rather prefer less battery usage.
[1]: Except in some countries that chose not to regulate telecom market, but gave telecom majors free hands to gouge without giving much in return. Sadly, most notably USA.
That's far from ubiquitous. And while speeds may be high, data transfer costs are also still quite high. Most people have a monthly cap. Halving (made up number) the data consumption of FaceTime has a very positive effect on that.
Also, battery usage difference should be small as video codecs are usually implemented in hardware on phones. I would expect the radio and screen to make up for the majority of power usage, not CPU/GPU.
I've tried 4G networks on every continent and multiple devices and I haven't seen 450Mbit anywhere be really commercially really available.
Infact most "4G" networks out there give you less speed than what HSUPA/HSDPA 3G/3.5G networks could theoretically provide.
But even if you had those speeds the low bandwidth makes h.265 attractive not because of max download/upload speed but because of datacaps, if you only have 2GB of cellular data each month and you can have a video codec that both allows you to conduct video calls in suboptimal conditions as well at 1/5th or so of the bitrate that h.264 needs for similar visual quality it's really a no brainer which one you use.
Shrug. 4G just happens to work for me I guess. There's nothing wrong with the technology, but a lot is wrong with some carriers.
I honestly don't understand how people put up with carriers like AT&T and Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. Their plans are (almost) 10 years behind in performance and 10 years ahead in price.
I have 50 down/10 up 4G from work and "unlimited Mbps"/50 Mbps private, practically it's about 100-150/50 Mbps. My phone is capable of 450 Mbps, that shouldn't be the limiting factor. Neither have caps nor throttling. Some months I use almost 100 GB. Ping to my home server is about 15-20 ms (fiber).
