Android developer site xda-developers got its hands on a pre-release copy of the Camera app designed for Google’s upcoming Pixel 4—so naturally, the site then sideloaded it on a Pixel 2XL.

The majority of the settings exposed in the screenshots already existed in Camera 6.x, but even long-time Pixel users could be forgiven for not knowing they existed. Where Camera 6.x hid them in five separate menus—each squirreled away behind a tiny, unintuitive icon at the top of the viewfinder—Camera 7.0 combines them into a single, much easier-to-read menu. This one context-sensitive settings menu (its options differ between, for example, Night Sight mode and regular Camera mode) can be accessed either by tapping a drop-down arrow or by swiping down on the viewfinder itself.

Behind the scenes, xda-developers reports finding new scene-detection code that integrates with an extended “Camera coaching” feature that offers tips for taking better pictures. If you’re sick and tired of seeing “try Night Sight mode” or “try Portrait mode” popping helpfully up while taking pictures, you’ll also be able to disable the feature entirely—whereas, at least so far as we can tell, in Camera 6.x you’re stuck with them.

As always with Pixel phones, the full extent of the changes in Camera 7.0 are likely to remain obscure until you’ve played with the actual app. Pixel phones use artificial intelligence techniques to automatically enhance and manipulate images automatically, and we’re not yet sure how much has changed there—or how much of this is tied to the hardware version of the phone and not the Camera app itself.

There have been plenty of rumors leaking about Pixel 4 (some directly from Google!), but the phone’s official release date remains unannounced. So for now, more details on Camera 7.0 are available at Mishaal Rahman’s original overview of the leaked APK.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1568675