Google Pixel 4’s Live HDR Mode, Dual Exposure Controls Won’t Come to Older Pixel Phones

Google Pixel 4 became official last week and it brings a host of new camera features such as Live HDR, astrophotography mode, and an improved portrait mode among others. But it appears that the Live HDR mode and dual exposure controls will remain exclusive to the Pixel 4 duo, and won't make their way to older Pixel smartphones such as the Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3a. Moreover, the Pixel 4 has been put through the paces for its photography capabilities by DxOMark, and its net tally stands at 112, which is significantly lower than chart-topper Huawei Mate 30 Pro.

Starting with the disappointing news, the Pixel 4's Live HDR and dual exposure control features won't make their way to previous-generation Pixel smartphones. Dual exposure controls allow users to adjust the brightness and shadows in their photos, while Live HDR shows a preview of how the photo will look with HDR settings applied before clicking a picture

"Dual Exposure Controls and Live HDR+ require low-level capabilities in the hardware that are only available on Pixel 4, so they will not be available on older Pixel devices”, the official Made by Google account tweeted while replying to a query.

Since Google Pixel phones rely mostly on software and computational photography, it is unlikely that the chipset has a role to play here regarding the exclusivity of Live HDR and dual exposure controls on Pixel 4. Instead, it appears that the “hardware that are only available on Pixel 4” being talked about here is the advanced Pixel Neural Core chip inside the Pixel 4 that replaces the Pixel Visual Core chip inside the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL.

Talking about photography, the Pixel 4's camera performance has been assessed by DxOMark and it has been awarded a score of 112 for still photography and 92 for video capture. The Pixel 4 has been lauded for its colour reproduction, good exposure control, accurate autofocus, and detail in still photos. However, the Pixel 4 is far behind the Huawei Mate 30 Pro (DxOMark Score: 121), and also sits below the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Galaxy S10 5G, Honor 20 Pro, OnePlus 7 Pro, and the Huawei P30 Pro.

Google Pixel 4 has been bashed for its low battery capacity in the first wave of reviews, but there is a silver lining that even the company did not mention in its presentation. The Pixel 4 supports 11W Qi wireless charging and is currently listed with the 11W Qi wireless charging capability on the Wireless Power Consortium database, something that was first spotted by XDA-Developers' Editor-in-Chief Mishaal Rahman. What this means is that the Pixel 4 can be charged wirelessly with Qi-compatible third-party wireless chargers delivering up to 11W power, a significant boost from the 5W cap imposed on third-party wireless chargers in case of the Pixel 3.