Google is working on the enhancement of the function in question, reaching as early as 2020 to enable support for astrophotography with the ultra-wide-angle sensor of the Google Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G. This experience, however, was short-lived, so much so that both smartphones had already seen it taken away at the end of 2020.
Google astrophotography with the ultra-wide-angle sensor
Google’s choice was probably dictated by insurmountable hardware limitations, such as to make the shots taken with the active astrophotography function on the ultra-wide-angle sensor of unsatisfactory quality, not at all comparable to the results obtained with the main sensors.
Well, three years later, with the Pixel camera sensors having in the meantime made enormous leaps forward in terms of quality and resolution, Mountain View have finally decided that the time is ripe to reintroduce the function in question, although with availability limited only to the absolute flagship Google Pixel 8 Pro .
In fact, when the astrophotography mode comes into operation on the Google Pixel 8 Pro — keeping the smartphone in a shooting situation with little ambient light — the Pixel Camera app shows the options to switch from the default 1x mode to the 2x and 0.5x.
