Google will finally catch up to Apple’s cameras with wide color support on the Pixel 4

There's no argument that Android phones have made huge strides in the last few years, with heavy hitters from Samsung, Huawei, and Google's own Pixel line delivering phenomenal mobile photography. They all typically get really close to Apple's iPhone camera, if not beating it out entirely, but there's one area where Apple's cameras still do a slightly better job.

Capturing photos on a modern iPhone has a much wider color range than equivalent Android devices, since Apple uses the P3 color gamut. The P3 gamut is about 25% larger than sRGB, which is standard for everything else.

The drawback to using the smaller color range is that you lose some of the extreme ranges of color, and if you view a photo from an iPhone on an Android phone you'll simply lose some of the vibrancy as the phone's screen tries to display everything it can with a more limited color space.

But that might change with the Google Pixel 4, although it's been rumored since a P3 gamut photo was leaked from a Pixel 3 despite the phone not being able to actually use that feature. But now some code in the updated Google camera app hints at P3 color capture, which was then recompiled with the feature turned on and tested over at XDA. That means that yes, it works on a Pixel 3, and also yes, it absolutely should be supported on the Pixel 4 and hopefully some other Android devices. Devices like the Galaxy S10 support 100% of the P3 color gamut on its display, after all.

This won't be a night and day difference on any photos, but it will add a little more pop and color accuracy to your photos. Definitely something to be excited about.

source: XDA Developers