Clicking Night Mode photos has been one of Google’s primary strengths ever since they entered the smartphone photography game with the Pixel devices. However, this feature has usually only been present in premium and mid-range smartphones. Google is now bringing Night Mode photography to entry level smartphones with an update to their Camera Go app, starting with the Nokia 1.3.
Really happy to work with @Google in bringing Night Mode to Camera Go on Nokia 1.3 phones. You can take crisp photos in low light, without the flash, while keeping colors bright. Let me know what you think! 📷🌃 https://t.co/y2SkPHN01P
— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) October 5, 2020
Shooting in low-light conditions typically requires a heavy amount of computational photography to produce output images with good exposure. Previously, this required high-quality sensors and atleast a mid-range processor. Not anymore though, as Google has found a way to bring this feature to entry level devices that run Android Go.
With Night Mode enabled, the Camera Go will capture multiple shots of the scene when the shutter button is pressed, and then combine them in post to output an image with improved colours and brightness. While this feature will not help in extremely poor-lighting conditions (which something that the Pixel excels at), it will definitely make a difference in dimly-lit indoor spaces or outdoors at night.
To make this feature work, Google worked with specific smartphone manufacturers and their Android Go smartphones, which allows them to tune Night Mode for its specific hardware. The feature is first arriving to the Nokia 1.3 smartphone and is expected to roll out to more smartphones later. Google also announced that they plan to bring HDR capabilities to the Camera Go soon.