Intro

Google’s Pixel 3 comes with a single camera. For photo zoom, it uses Super Res Zoom which is merely a Digital zoom of up to 7 times. Although it can take pictures of far away objects, the image quality tends to be grainy.

In the Pixel 4 and 4 XL, the new smartphone now packs it with 2 rear camera with 12.2-megapixel f/1.7 main, 16-megapixel f/2.4 telephoto and a front 8-megapixel selfie cameras. It still lacks a wide angle camera that is already present on a number of high end smartphones. As for video, the cameras can handle 4K at up to 30 fps, and 1080p at 120 fps.

To achieve the optimum picture quality, the Pixel uses a combination of 2X optical zoom on the second camera + software Super Res Zoom to deliver sharper pictures than before. To zoom, just pinch on the view finder and it can zoom up to 8x. We supposed that is a hybrid zoom with optial of 2X.

We have done a test with Pixel 3 XL vs Pixel 4. The pictures are not downsized and are in their native resolution.

Pixel 3 XL original photo No zoom
The same shot using Pixel 4 No zoom

By Harry