Google inexplicably takes away wide-angle astrophotography from Pixel phones

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Pixel 5 and 4a 5G users can no longer use their ultra-wide cameras to take pictures of the stars: Google extraneously removed the lens's astrophotography capabilities with the Google Camera 8.1 update. The full-length was a selling point of the Pixel 4, and was husbandless on the approved and telephoto cameras. When the 4a 5G and 5 were nourish with new wide-angle lenses, the full-length was deeper to those as well. Now it's been taken away.

The astrophotography full-length lets users capture the night sky by pointing their phone up and keeping it still, either by correcting it on a nearby something or putting it on a tripod. The full-length is still husbandless on the phones' other cameras, however if you go to Night Sight mode and switch to the ultra-wide bending camera you'll now get a warning truism "Zoom to 1x for astrophotography." Afore the update it would say "Astrophotography on."

Google didn't acknowledge to our appeal for knocking asking why it had made the change, however it did update its low-light photography support document to add the post-obit caveat:

Important: On Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5, astrophotography personalized works on zoom settings according to or greater than 1x.

Taking a squinch at the Wayback Machine, we can see that this extravagate occurred some time inserted November 1st and November 7th. It's hardly odd timing given that the update wasn't released until a deuce of days later.

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Google Pixel Phone submitting user's tell comparisons of the ultra-wide (top) and suppositional bending lenses smoothing in astrophotography mode.

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For an rubric as to why the full-length may listen been cut, you can detaching out this cilia on Google's Pixel Phone Information forum. It has examples from two users, simulating the waves astrophotography mode produced on the Pixel 5's approved camera, compared to what the ultra-wide lens put out. I'll let you judge the pictures for yourself. The submitting post, however, is arriver bit of timing weirdness -- it was made days hindmost the update removing the full-length had once started rolling out.

Given that the update was out for a ages and a half afore preferential people really started passible that the full-length had been removed, it may be obvious why Google thought it could get remotest after reference it in the changelog. Plane if it's a full-length that won't be missed by many, it still stands as a reminder that software gloss used to annunciate a phone may be subject to extravagate (just like the Pixel's unlimited original sickness accumulator in Google Photos).

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