Gadgetory

one of the major deciding factors among most consumers when it comes to picking that optimal smartphone is their camera performance if you think about it most consumers really don't care about specs or the million features that brands back into their devices these days you know they just want a phone that can keep up with their basic tasks like being able to send text messages send and receive emails browse the web watch youtube videos or Netflix and of course take good pictures with your friends or family or interesting subjects it's all about having a good time the problem is that there are so many options out there right now rating at different price points and so naturally the more you pay the more you get in terms of features except for a few hand flow devices now if you're in the market for a smartphone with the best possible camera the Google pixel 3 and the 3 excel are hands-down the best options available at the moment followed by a few other competitors but there's been a lot of buzz around lately especially when I was reading this up online where developers were able to port the Google camera app to other cheaper and Android smartphones and the result seemed to work really well and so I decided to try that out for myself on the oneplus 60 because this was the cheapest smartphone that I had lying around and guys the results are really worth taking a look so let's go and just check them out but first a quick message from our sponsor what would you like so I'm looking for a gaming headset with a bit of everything but not overkill something that folds on your neck sure how about the light frame without excessive clamping force yes yes you comfortable ear cushions with proper internal padding excellent I will take the cable and the microphone are removable fine fine this is the one multi-platform compatibility with a virtual surround sound dongle avail can I just take one and the sound quality you'll be satisfied with so the new Coolermaster MH 751 and 75 to are here to make your gaming experience alright guys so before I get into the results there are a few things that I need to address firstly there are a variety of devices that you can try this out and there's a list on the XD developer site including support for the latest razor phone to the galaxy note 9 the Yami poco phone one phones from Lenovo as well I'll leave a link to the site in the description dumb if you're interested in trying it out for yourself provided you have one of these supported devices secondly the process of setting this up is fairly straightforward it's not rocket science and you don't need an unlocked bootloader to try this out for yourself it's as simple as downloading the respective apk enabling the unknown source tab and installing the app and that's it that's all that needs to be done now do keep in mind that this experience might be a little bit different on other Android smartphones in my case with the oneplus 60 at least with the updated version I was able to pretty much get a exact same replica found on the pixel 3 but it doesn't really utilize all the features of that particular hardware so the results will likely be different I should also mention that this doesn't replace the stock camera app on the device so you don't have to worry about voiding your warranty or something plus developers are working on updating the respective apks to improve stability so with that out of the way here are the results I made sure to enable hdr+ on both the stock and the google camera apps to get optimal results and here's our first sample and right off the bat you might not notice a significant difference between the two but if you zoom in a bit closer you'll notice that the Google camera app does a better job maintaining the detail without introducing digital noise a like B stock app on the 60 and this was a continuing trend with the other samples as well now in this shot the stock camera app on the 6d has a slight green shift whereas the Google camera mod captured what was true to life in terms of colors now this is totally subjective you may end up liking the one captured by the stock app and that's okay it's all about personal preference here's another interesting comparison the Google camera app exposed for the subject perfectly whereas the stock app on the 16 just ended up boosting the shadows giving it a surreal effect and not to mention the image coming out of the Google camera mod is just so much sharper the stock app also tends to produce images that are a little bit less contrasty compared to the Google camera app and it also bumps up the saturation by a slight amount and you'll also notice a little bit of that green shift that I talked about earlier I think this has to do with the auto white balance setting and remember I was just spending a few seconds taking these shots instead of manually adjusting the shutter speed and ISO because realistically you want able to quickly snap a photo and move on to the next now this picture really turned things around I'm pretty sure most of you would go with the one shot in the stock app versus the Google app and I tend to fall in that same category because there is better dynamic range and the slight bump in saturation certainly gives a little bit of life to the image whereas the one in the Google camera app just looks dull here's a sample from my low-light test and honestly I'm really impressed by the image coming out of the Google camera app because it's not only sharp and well exposed but there's a good balance between the highlights and the shadows everything from the reflection of the salt lamp to the watch face just makes it look more natural whereas with a stock camera app it just boosts the shadows and there's a lot and I mean a lot of digital noise introduced here plus it doesn't look as sharp as Google's result this was another low-light test and clearly the Google camera takes the edge here because it's more realistic there's barely any noise and it's usable when compared to the stock app that kind of blurs things around losing detail now I should mention that the Google camera app does tend to underexpose in certain situations but that can easily be fixed in post what can be fixed again is the detail and I think I'm repeating myself here again when it comes to sharpness the Google camera mod takes the edge for the most part but here's the million dollar question does portrait mode work on the Google camera mod unfortunately no at least on my sample I tried multiple times with different subjects but I was out of luck maybe an updated version could fix that but interestingly it did work with the front-facing camera and point the results are pretty interesting so I actually tend to prefer the one on the pixel three because it's a little bit more aggressive and there's better subject separation compared to the one plus 60 the stock app that just tends to gradually blur things out giving it a little bit of a it just it's an interesting effect of course both of them have different characteristics but let me know in the comments down below which one do you prefer here are some other samples well there you guys have it and I've got to admit I am really impressed with this little smartphone hack I mean just looking at the results overall you're getting a much better image with this Google camera app compared to the stock app because it's more cleaner it's sharper there is just the colors are more true to life and it just does a better job processing HDR and it just does better in low light as well now it's that being said it's not perfect because I've run into a lot of times where the shutter button wouldn't work and things like slow motion and a few other Google features that are on the pixel lineup or phones just don't work on the version that I've loaded on the 60 so I'm just hoping that the brilliant developers were able to you know think of this in the first place are still working on it so we'll hope that you may be stable version can fix that later on so yeah at the end of the day guys I think this is just the beginning because it's all about computational photography and that's because software is ultimately the key when it comes to analyzing and fine-tuning things out of the sensor to make images more true to life and just look good overall so that's it for me let me know what you guys think about this in fact if you're rocking one of these supported devices that are listed on the XDA developer site are you interested in checking out or trying out this Google camera mod and have you actually tried it out for yourself if so I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments down below and are you impressed you know the interesting thing is sometimes I actually love or tend to prefer the one taking on the stock app and that's okay because I have two camera apps that can take two different characteristics or two different images that have different characteristics and I think I can't really complain about that now on the video side of things I wasn't able to notice a significant difference between the two applications but overall guys I think I'm really looking forward to testing out this Google camera hack on other Android smartphones to see what the results are I'm hero with higher connects I'm signing off and I'll see you guys in the next one