ISSUE 68 • ANDROID ADVISOR 29into a single black box. I’ll admit, I miss the look of the
single lens, but at least the new design keeps the rest
of the phone’s rear clean and uninterrupted.
It’s a design that feels decidedly modern, with
the unfortunate exception of the big ol’ bezel on the
front. Not everyone minds a bezel of course – and
anything’s better than the Pixel 3 XL’s giant notch
- butwhenevenbudgetphonesnowcomewith
full-screen displays, it’s hard not to resent that lost
screen real estate.
Camera
Still, Pixel phones have never led the market on their
looks. It’s what’s inside that counts.
First up, let’s talk camera, since that’s always the
first thing on anyone’s mind with a Pixel. For the first
time on these phones, Google has thrown a second
camera lens onto the rear: a 16Mp telephoto, which
Google says is ‘about 2x zoom’, though it actually
kicks in when you hit 1.9x.
The Pixel 3 already delivered phenomenal digital
zoom, and with the help of a telephoto lens things
have only gotten better. The phone actually uses both
lenses for zoomed in shots, and lets you use its full
suite of computational tools with the second lens,
including both Night Sight and Portrait mode.
In good lighting, the telephoto delivers
astonishingly crisp, sharp zoomed shots, with natural-
looking images free of artifacting. The tighter f/2.4
aperture on the telephoto means that the colours
aren’t always consistent between the two lenses,
and zoomed in shots, especially those taken outside,