Night Mode and HDR Photography Coming Soon to Android Go Phones

• The Android Go camera app is getting an update that brings a new “Night Mode” while HDR mode will follow up soon.
• These inexpensive devices will take a burst of images and combine them to create a more delightful result.
• This will be a jump in quality for low-cost mobile photography, and it’s only the beginning of what’s to come in the following years.

Low-cost devices that run the stripped-down “Android Go” OS are generally underpowered and come with several compromises, but photography may soon not be one of them. Of all things, it would seem that this area is the most demanding, but the amazing developments in Google’s computational photography have made it possible for even Qualcomm Series-2 chips to snap some impressive images, even during the night time and in low-light conditions.

The night mode is already rolling out on the Android Go camera app of the Nokia 1.3, which uses the Qualcomm 215 chip. Even that chip is equipped with dual ISP for optical zoom and depth capture and is able to capture a burst of photos and merge them into a single image that looks jaw-droppingly sharp and bright. These are features previously available only on the Pixel devices, but we see them now becoming available at the lower end of the Android ecosystem- the Go devices.

As for the HDR (high dynamic range) mode, this is expected to increase the photo’s quality by extending the luminosity range and rendering a final result that has an optimal tone mapping. Again, CPU power will be required to process a range of SDR photographs and the compilation of a final product. However, these algorithms have gotten so lean and optimized that they don’t require a power-horse to produce good enough results.

After all, we don’t expect flagship-level photography, and that is not the point here. The goal is to make images captured on an inexpensive Android device look a lot better, be actually usable, and essentially extend these devices’ functionality into a previously somewhat ignored space. All of that was as simple as pushing a camera app update, so it’s all done with software tricks.

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Low-light photography is the most difficult type, and when it comes to smartphones, getting enough light/photons to hit on that tiny lens is a puzzle with no physical solution. This has pushed innovation to great extents and had imaging experts investing much of their time and effort in the development of smarter software that can take washed out and pitch-black photographs and turn them into mesmerizing pictures. As the years pass, this tech is coming down on the lower-cost levels. Soon, the lines between entry-level and mid-range photography will begin to blur.