Google’s Pixel 3 is widely regarded as having one of the best smartphone cameras available, but there’s one area in which the iPhone camera has enjoyed a unique advantage - until now.
According to a report from XDA Developers, Google has begun to add much-improved color support to the Pixel’s native camera app. This feature, which Apple calls ‘Wide Color’, enables the capture of a far greater range of colors (known as ‘DCI-P3’) than the much less vivid sRGB standard currently in use by Android cameras.
DCI-P3 will enable the Pixel’s camera to capture 25% more of the colors visible to the human eye, allowing for photos with richer and more lifelike color which can take full advantage of the smartphone’s high-quality OLED display.
Google announced plans to support wide color imaging in a blog post last month, but now XDA Developers forum member cstark27 has located an experimental toggle for the feature buried in the code of the latest version of Google’s camera app and provided a modified version for download with the ‘Display P3’ color mode enabled.
The Xda Developers team then tested the modified camera app and discovered that images could indeed now be captured and saved with wide color; noting, in particular, the improvements when shooting colorful scenes such as flowers and gardens.
As the report notes, there is still a long way to go before wide color images will be of use to Pixel users, as support must be added to apps before they can display the extra colors.
Display P3 color looks likely to appear on the forthcoming Pixel 4, but the results of these tests give a strong indication that current models will also be able to take advantage of the feature.
App developers, it’s over to you...
