Google’s latest Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones are finally here and, as expected, both are packed with big camera improvements. However, the Pro model gains more of an advantage than you might have expected, beating Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro in at least one key area.
Google's Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones come with significant camera upgrades.
Revealed at the company’s Made By Google event on Oct 6, the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones launched with much of the attention focused on their new cameras, powered by Google’s new Tensor G2 processor. However, the biggest advantages come when Google’s image processing skills are combined with the superior triple-lens camera hardware of the Pixel 7 Pro — as revealed in a recent collection of sample images.
Alexander Schiffauer, Product Lead of Computation Photography at Google, has published a Google Photos album containing some impressive examples of what the Pixel 7’s Super Res Zoom feature can achieve. Starting from ultra-wide and zooming in all the way to 30x, you can see the very high detail captured by the Pixel 7 Pro.
In addition to its 50-megapixel main camera, the Pixel 7 Pro comes with a new 5x telephoto module and a new, even wider, ultrawide lens with a 125.8-degree field of view — that’s noticeably wider than the Pixel 7 at 114 degrees and the iPhone 14 Pro at 120 degrees. This means the Pixel 7 Pro can zoom further in and further out. By contrast, the iPhone 14 Pro, despite its stellar overall camera performance, lags behind in this regard with its 3x optical zoom lens providing up to 15x digital zoom.
These images show the maximum zoom range of the Pixel 7 Pro, from ultra-wide to 30x Super Res Zoom. ... [+]
The images above illustrate the full zoom range of the Pixel 7 Pro. In these samples, shots clearly remain usable at 30x zoom. The full-resolution originals, along with other similarly impressive examples, are available to view in Schiffauer’s album.
What is Super Res Zoom?
First launched with the Pixel 3, Super Res Zoom creates images with a higher resolution than the camera sensor alone can provide. This is achieved by capturing a burst of multiple shots and taking advantage of the tiny hand movements that naturally occur when holding the phone. This results in a batch of images taken from slightly different angles which are then aligned and combined to produce a photo containing significantly more detail than any of the individual images.
Google recently upgraded this feature from a maximum of 20x zoom on the Pixel 6 Pro to 30x on the new Pixel 7 Pro. The standard Pixel 7, which had no dedicated telephoto lens, can achieve up to 8x Super Res Zoom.
Follow @paul_monckton on Instagram
