Stefan Mileschin

It is a bit of a problem when your flagship smartphone is shipping with a fault on its camera – as Google is finding out.

Google’s advertisements say the Pixel devices have the “highest-rated smartphone camera ever” but users are moaning that the latest Pixel phone had so much lens flare holiday snaps were looking like one of the new Star Trek movies.

Now Google is developing a software fix to address excessive lens flare on photographs taken with its flagship Pixel smartphones. But some users are alarmed that Google was trying to solve a hardware issue with a software fix.

What is weird is that at a launch event in October, Google said the phones had received the highest-ever score from DxOMark, which measures camera performance. But the test acknowledged that “flaring was sometimes an issue when shooting in full sun,” but did not identify an issue with other light sources.

Google said it was developing software that could spot the issue and compensate for it.

Google’s Isaac Reynolds said: “We’re working on some algorithms that recognise the halo/arc flare, characterise it mathematically and then subtract it from the image.”

It is a bit on the nose when the pixel costs $750. Software is only going to doctor the photo it is not going to fix the hardware issue.

http://www.techeye.net/mobile/google...xel-lens-flare