This is what EXCELLENT camera support looks like from an OEM. Apps can access all 3 cameras through a single logical camera, and full access to all camera extensions providing native auto, HDR, bokeh, face retouching, and night mode to any dev who wants it. Great job, Samsung.
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We have a comparison at twitter.com/GrapheneOS/sta. Compared to Pixels, Samsung phones have CameraX extensions and ZSL support. Pixels have proper multi-camera support via CONTROL_ZOOM_RATIO where third party apps can use the automatic switching between ultrawide, normal, telephoto.
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GrapheneOS Camera device specific features:
1) Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS)
2) using ultrawide/telephoto cameras via zooming
3) image capture during video recording
4) Continuous Auto Focus (CAF)
5) Zero Shutter Lag (ZSL)
6) HDR, Night, Portrait, Face Retouch, Auto modes
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Are you sure Samsung phones don’t have zoom? My S22 Ultra can go from 0.5x to 10x but not beyond in graphene camera
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Nice, that means our camera app has the entire feature set on the most recent Samsung devices now. You can also enable ZSL in the advanced options but it's hard to see the difference on high end devices. It will make a difference when we add burst mode which is planned.
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I think the main reason Pixels don't have ZSL support is because they provide HDR+ via the regular API since the Pixel 2. It substantially predates Camera2/CameraX extensions and is part of why they've been in no rush to implement those, since you have HDR+ on Pixels without it.
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Is pixel the only phone that provides HDR through the main camera pipeline without needing an extension or requiring apps to build their own custom HDR
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Possible Samsung has decent processing for the normal camera mode in other apps. You could try comparing HDR and Camera modes in low light. It should be easy to see if HDR is actually doing better by reducing noise. Normal mode could just be doing it less aggressively though.
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As far as I know though, Pixels were the only devices providing great image quality via the normal camera API without needing to implement your own processing. I'm just not sure if Samsung has also addressed this now. It may not make sense to do what Pixels in 2021/2022 though.
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Pixel 4a and later (it's strangely not available on the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL) use the high quality preview toggle (disabled by default) to provide HDRnet for preview. CameraX uses this automatically.
We haven't confirmed if video HDRnet is provided to other apps for Pixel 6.
Google Camera has HDRnet for preview earlier than that but it's nice that they made it available to other apps. The strange thing about it right now is that HDRnet for preview seems to match Google Camera quite well, but the HDR+ provided by the OS/hardware isn't as good yet.
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This means in some cases, the preview has less noise via HDRnet than the actual image has via HDR+ in third party camera apps because you seem to get the full or near full HDRnet for preview but OS/hardware HDR+ you get in other apps doesn't use as many frames as Google Camera.
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I actually noticed the Pixel 4a/5/5a had worse image quality in apps than Pixel 4/4XL, so I'm not sure that change was for the best
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Only difference is that the preview on Pixel 4a, 4a (5G), 5, 6, 6 Pro and 6a uses HDRnet. It doesn't impact the captured images. Problem is that at least on 4a and 5th gen devices (4a (5G), 5, 5a), the preview misleads you into thinking there will be less noise than you'll get.
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