Google's proprietary HDR+ will now work on any smartphone with Snapdragon 820, 821 or 835

Last year, Google unveiled the first smartphones of their new premium line-up, the Pixel series. Google replaced their previous Nexus series, and with that, they bid adieu to average camera performances as well. While the Nexus series had a good record of overall performance, camera was never its USP, except the Nexus 6P which had pretty good optics.

At the launch of Pixel and Pixel XL last year, Google mentioned that the DxOMark score of Pixel is the highest ever at that time. While scoring high doesn't guarantee better pictures, the Pixel phones indeed had one of the best cameras. Tech reviewers especially lauded the camera's HDR+ mode, which gave incredible images. The highly powerful Snapdragon 821 ensured better image processing. The 821 is so powerful that the half second processing time required for shooting HDR images in other phones was practically reduced to zero.



Naturally, everyone wanted the image processing capabilities of Pixel on their smartphones. But even when the Google Camera app was extracted and installed on other phones, this feature was not available. Now, a Ukrainian developer has successfully ported HDR+ on a modded version of Google Camera 4.4 with Android Oreo developer preview 3.

Google's proprietary HDR+ will now work on any smartphone with Snapdragon 820, 821 or 835  

The modded version brings the HDR+ feature to non-Google phones, provided your smartphone sports Snapdragon 820, 821 or 835. This is because the software requires Hexagon 680 ISP, which is currently available on these three processors.

Captured on OnePlus 3 without HDR+ mode

Captured on OnePlus 3 with HDR+ mode


It takes multiple low exposure pictures at the same time, and merges them to reduce noise. The result is great photos without any lag. The modded version on some phones are not as quick as the Pixel's version, but the small lag is a good price to pay for the amazing picture quality. Improvements may not be always visible on Galaxy S8, LG G6 and OnePlus 5, since these already have very good cameras, but the quality is not lower either. But on smartphones like OnePlus 3, there will be noticeable difference, as can be seen from the images above.

All you have to do is click on the link below, which will take you to the Android File Host, from where you can download the APK. XDA has verified that this mod is working on smartphones such as Samsung Galaxy S8, LG G6, OnePlus 3, 3T and OnePlus 5.

Download : Google Camera App

Source: XDA
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