Despite its seemingly underwhelming single camera setup, the Pixel 2 is capable of capturing stunning images. The camera hardware is assisted by Google's AI sorcery that uses computational photography techniques such as merging up to 10 underexposed exposures into a brighter image, also known as HDR+. Although it has been around since the Nexus 5, the Pixel’s introduction of Zero Shutter Lag (ZSL) made it a lot more popular.
As expected, Google does not officially allow Google Camera to be installed on third-party devices as the technology behind is proprietary. However, the Google Camera app with working HDR+ was ported to many devices by developers. Ports are now available for a broad variety of devices working on Qualcomm Snapdragon and Exynos SoCs (and not MediaTek, for obvious reasons)
A Ukranian developer by the name of B-S-G has been at the forefront of developing the Google Camera ports. The developer has now released his latest Google Camera 5.1.018 port that works on the Mi 8. As the Xiaomi Poco F1 is similar in hardware to the Mi 8, the same port works on the Poco F1, although several important features are missing. The following features are working on the Poco F1:
- Portrait Mode (front and rear)
- HDR+
- Video recording
The following features are not working on the Poco F1:
- ZSL
- Slow-Mo
- Smart burst
The Google Camera port works only on devices that have Camera2API enabled. You can check if your device is eligible here. Thankfully for Poco F1 users, all Xiaomi devices with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 or Snapdragon 710 have the Camera2 API enabled. Bear in mind that the application is still in development and might not work as intended. Very often the app will crash at the most inopportune moment. If you own a Poco F1 or Mi 8 and want to give it a spin, head over to this link to download it and report any bugs you find.
News Source: XDA developers
