Gadgetory

for all the not-so-nice things we had to say about the Moto X's camera it's one saving grace was the viewfinder a model of elegant simplicity that blew away the convoluted stock Android camera software today google has introduced an update to that stock Android viewfinder available on the Play Store for download on all devices running Android for dot for KitKat and above Taylor Martin and I spent an afternoon with the new software on an HTC One m8 and galaxy s5 respectively and we're here to share the highs and the lows I'm Michael Fisher this is pocket now and this is your guided tour of google camera for android kitkat the core of the new google camera app is simplicity looking through the viewfinder a shutter button is all there is to see plus a small expandable menu toggle the shutter button is anchored to the right hand side of the display which will anger lefties but the fact that it's there means you can tap to focus without also being forced to take a photo an improvement over the old moto X design behind that toggle is a simple one layer menu that's much easier to navigate than the previous version letting you adjust flash HDR which camera you're shooting with guidelines and exposure though we can't seem to get the exposure level to change on our galaxy s5 the fun stuff happens on that extensible menu on the left hand side revealed by swiping right to left anywhere on the viewfinder that's where you get access to the camera and video mode selector as well as fun stuff like photosphere and panorama as long as you're running a device with hardware powerful enough to support those features sorry moto g owners the biggest addition to the suite is lens blur Google's answer to features like HTC's you focus Samsung's selective focus and Nokia refocus according to the Google research blog lens blur uses multiple exposures to create a 3d depth map of a scene and then it blurs certain pixels by differing amounts depending on the pixels depth aperture and location relative to the focal plane that's pretty cool science talk but what it means in practice is that you spend a little more time taking the shot as you need to raise the camera slowly during the capture to give the software time to grab enough frames to do its thing it's a little finicky but once you've taken a few shots you get used to it the results aren't perfect there's often some edge fuzz here and there and if the space between subject and background isn't wide enough the software is easy to confuse but based on a few hours of testing I think I'd rather use lens blur than anything else currently available with the possible exception of Nokia refocus it's just less finicky capable of handling a wider range of shooting situations than the often impossible to satisfy HTC you focus or Samsung selective focus features it's not lens blur that makes this experience great though nor is it the panorama or photosphere functions rather the high point of this new software is its design everything adheres to the same aesthetic and the options on the left the Photos app is a quick swipe away to the right and if you absolutely need to get a deeper level settings they're available and logically laid out we do wish google would have left us manual white balance and the timer and we're also not happy about the omission of still photo capability and camcorder mode losing options is never fun but if those are the sacrifices it took to make this cleaner quicker prettier experience possible so be it we'll wait for those features to trickle back in with updates for now we'll enjoy not hating the stock camera experience on Android for the first time in a long while you