24 ANDROID ADVISOR • ISSUE 44
REVIEW
snapper, though this time it has the support of optical
stabilisation. It has an f/1.8 lens and the sensor has
1.4μm pixels – larger than your average sensor pixels
(on a phone, that is).
This means the Pixel 2 XL can take better HDR
photos by combining more frames. And this happens
in the background without you noticing: HDR+ mode
is enabled by default.
There’s also Portrait mode without the need for a
second camera, or for you to move the phone around
in strange ways. For the uninitiated, it means you get a
blurred background behind a nice sharp subject.
This is done using the sensor’s dual pixels rather
than a second lens, but Google’s ‘computational
photography’ is also used to work out what’s in the
foreground and the background. It also means you
can use Portrait mode for selfies, too.Caption