The Google Pixel 6 is due to be the biggest smartphone release from Google since the original Pixel smartphones in 2016. For the first time, the company is launching a smartphone with its own custom SoC, but that’s not the only significant change that’s on the way. If the leaks are to be believed, Google is going all-in on the Pixel 6’s camera — not only with software but also new hardware.
The phone has already leaked in plenty of detail (and Google has been rolling along with the leak train), but the team at XDA Developers managed to get their hands on an unreleased version of the Google Camera app, as well as some details on how the Pixel 6 camera will function, and it looks amazing. The main camera sensor is said to be a 50MP Samsung ISOCELL GN1 sensor.
This would represent a considerable leap from the 12.2MP IMX363 sensor that Google has been using since the Pixel 3, launched in 2018. We also have a 12MP IMX386 sensor for the wide-angle camera and a 48MP IMX586 for its 4x optical telephoto, in the case of the Pixel 6 Pro. It will also support [email protected] video recording with up to 7X zoom (pictures and other video resolutions will go up to 20X).
We can also expect some exciting new software camera features, which is unsurprising given Google is all about the software and Pixel cameras are known for their excellent processing rather than just their raw camera horsepower. There are several takeaways here. One of them is manual white balance adjustments, giving you the ability to tweak the setting in your pictures on the fly.
The most intriguing new feature is the magic eraser — based on the name, it sounds like it could be a revisit of the object removal feature that was supposed to come to Google Photos but never actually arrived, except this time processed on-device by the TPU in the Google Tensor chipset.
Other potential features mentioned by XDA include face deblur, which was actually already confirmed by Google. This helps deblur faces in HDR images by capturing multiple photos with both the main sensor and the ultra-wide sensor, then using all data captured and feeding it to the TPU for processing. There’s also motion blur, portrait spotlight, nima aesthetic, and baby mode, but information on those is scarce, so we’ll have to wait and see what exactly they are capable of.
The Pixel 6 is coming pretty soon — check out our other coverage to find out more about what to expect.
