We rank our favorite camera features on Google's new flagships
The arrival of new Google Pixel phones is always a big moment for point-and-shoot snapping – and so it's proved again with the launch of the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro.
While the new flagships don't have a headline moment quite as big as the Pixel 3's introduction of 'Night Sight', they do bring a combination of exciting hardware and software upgrades that could fire them into the upper echelons of our best camera phones guide.
The basic hardware recipes of both the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro aren't radically different from their predecessors. Both have the same 50MP main cameras and 12MP ultra-wides, with the Pixel 7 Pro bringing an extra 48MP telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom powers.
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But under the hood, Google's new Tensor G2 processor powers some fancy computational photography features, including Photo Unblur and a new Cinematic Blur mode that looks suspiciously similar to Apple's Cinematic Mode.
So what are the two phones' most exciting photographic features? We've ranked the ones we're most looking forward to testing here – starting with that cheat mode for all our snapping mistakes, Photo Unblur...
Luckily, every one of our photos is perfectly crisp and never contains any mistakes (okay, that's a lie), but if your library is dotted with blurry clangers then Google's Photo Unblur trick could be a welcome godsend.
Initially only available in the Google Photos app on the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro (although we suspect it'll come to other phones soon), Photo Unblur is a development of Google's existing de-noise and sharpening tools and should nicely complement the Face Unblur trick that arrived last year on the Pixel 6 series.
Unlike Face Unblur, Photo Unblur is designed to be used retroactively on existing pics rather than in the moment of capture. While it can't work miracles on disastrous snapping incidents, the early demos show an impressive ability to rescue shots that have been sullied by slow shutter speeds, focusing issues, or mild hand-shake. And it'll work on photos taken on any camera, too.
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