Pixel 4 Camera Reported to Include New Motion Mode, Improved Night Sight (Updated: More!)

Details on the camera features found on the Pixel 4 are being reported on this week, with the phone said to include a new Motion Mode, plus an updated Night Sight mode for shooting in dark conditions.

Motion Mode is detailed to allow users to take high-quality action shots, with in-focus subjects and blurred backgrounds. Think of it like a Portrait mode, but while your subject is moving fast. If anyone has ever taken a photo of a moving subject before, such as a kid playing soccer, it’s not all that easy. This mode should help with that.

The improved Night Sight is suggested to be very good at taking shots of stars, otherwise known as astrophotography. This type of photography isn’t all too complicated with an expensive camera with a big sensor and comprehensive controls over the shutter speed, but translating all of that to a smartphone has proven difficult. Other improvements are said to include the speed at which Night Sight shots are captured.

Given this is a Pixel phone from Google, we expect to be blown away by the cameras.

UPDATE: The guys at XDA dove into a new Google Camera app and discovered a bunch of new features within code that are likely coming to the new 2019 Pixel phones. Some of those are:

• Audio Zoom: As you can probably guess, this Audio Zoom feature could be similar to the audio zoom feature that Samsung just showed off on the Note 10, where you can zoom while recording a video and the camera will focus the audio on a specific subject to enhance the sound.
• Live HDR: This could be groundbreaking, because a live HDR feature would potentially should you exactly how the camera plans to process with HDR before you ever take a shot. Google’s HDR was already amazing, but being able to see that HDR magic in real-time is next-level.
• Better Wide Angle Selfies: Wide angle lenses often badly distort things like buildings and faces, but Google could be working up some magic to reduce all of that and leave your wide angle shots looking more natural or realistic.

// 9to5 Google