Google’s Pixel Camera chief, Isaac Reynolds, thinks year-to-year upgrades to smartphone cameras are still critical, even though some detractors think they’re passé.
“A person who is a casual photographer and desperately wants to be a hobbyist—they’re never going to break that ceiling unless you give them the tools,” he says. “The features that others call ‘meh’—for some people, those features are life-changing.”
Take the 30X Super Res Zoom on the Pixel 7 Pro from 2022, which uses machine learning to stitch together multiple frames in a digitally zoomed photo to give you a result that’s much sharper than you’re used to. Reynolds says that because of this feature, Google now sees people using 30X zoom dramatically more than before.
The new Pixel 11 Pro, announced today, can zoom up to 120X, though in addition to the digital stitching, it relies on AI-generated pixels to fill in some details. Reynolds says maybe having that capability is enough to get someone interested in, say, wildlife photography. After experimenting on their phone, they’d be ready to invest in a professional camera and a big zoom lens.
“There’s a reason I work on low light and zoom every single year,” he says. “Because no matter how much I do it, when I do the user study with thousands of respondents, people always want more.”
Every year, Google debuts a new Pixel phone, and every year, there’s a slew of new camera tricks—largely powered by software wizardry—to deliver better photos than ever before. Last year, there was the Pro Res Zoom, which bumped up digital zoom on the Pixel 10 Pro to 100X. Two years before that, Google introduced “Add Me,” which lets two people take a group photo together without asking a stranger to take the pic for them.
For the Pixel 11 series, Google has demonstrated a handful of upgrades that can drastically alter the look of your photos, and even take some of the work out of capturing photos. Here’s a closer look at a few top new camera capabilities on the Pixel 11 series.
Magic Capture
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
So you want to capture a video of an important event—a concert of your favorite band, singing happy birthday to a loved one as a waiter brings a cake over, or your kid’s recital. Too often, you see people holding their phone up during these milestones, trying to capture the moment, instead of being present. That’s the problem Google’s new Magic Capture feature is trying to solve.