Smartphone picture quality not only depends on how big the mega pixel or how many cameras are used, but now days, your image quality is at least 50% depended on the software by which the picture is taken.
If you read the reviews and check out the photos of various smart phones, you may see, one of the best mobile phone photos are taken by Google Pixel phones and amazingly they use 12MP camera compared to today’s flagship smartphones with massive 108 MP camera sensors.
The magic is happening with the camera app software, which is taking advantage of your phone’s powerful processor to click multiple different setting images and then using its algorithm for merging & tuning those shots into a beautiful stunning image.
Every phone company now days invest heavily in their software department to create powerful camera app software, but Google has the best software right now in the market. So they can use their software magic to produce stunning images out of a 12 MP camera.
Software needs Hardware
Being android, software can run in any similar hardware supporting the similar processor hardware so many developers around the globe did just that. They have extracted the Camera App APK file out of Google Pixel ROM and did the necessary modification to allow it run in any compatible Android.
Who Can Run Google Pixel Camera (GCam) App?
Presently Google Pixel phones are using Snapdragon processor and chipset so its easy for anyone with a latest snapdragon processor (Must have Camera2 API Support) to run the Google Pixel Camera app. However one may need to look for a developer who has done some device specific modification in the GCam app to use different camera hardware sensors.
How can you get GCam (Google Pixel Camera app mod) running in your OnePlus Android Phone?
All the developers who are working with android code and software usually list themselves at XDA Developer Forum for connecting with others and collaborate in their project. List of all the developers who are working with GCam to release the app for different devices can be found here
https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/
You may find multiple individual developers are working with different releases but out of them all, Arnova8G2 is the first to come up with the app modification to allow it to run in other non google devices. So personally we prefer using his releases.
There are multiple version of GCam, you may need to try a few depending on your device type. For OnePlus devices, as of writing this article, the latest working releases are,
OnePlus 8 / 8 Pro / 8T / 9R -> https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/dev-arnova8G2-beta/f/dl1/
OnePlus 9 / 9 Pro -> https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/dev-arnova8G2-beta/f/dl0/
Just download the AKP file and install it in your OnePlus Device.
For OnePlus NORD 2, Nord CE, OnePlus 7 Series, OnePlus 6, 6T, you may try different releases to see which one works without any crashes or trouble from here -> Google Camera Port: Arnova8G2 apks (celsoazevedo.com)
How to use the GCam App?
After installation, on first launch the GCam camera app may ask for various permissions, just make sure to allow those and that is it. You may now simply use this Camera application and get some stunning results out from your OnePlus phones.
Result out of GCam
OnePlus is owned by Oppo and Oppo is known for their heavy work behind their camera department so OnePlus camera app itself isn’t bad for most of the condition but in certain condition, mainly challenging lighting or very low light or astro photography GCam will simply blow your mind with its awesome results.
Recently we took our EcoSports 1.5 Dragon to a Leh-Ladakh-Lahol-Spiti Himalayan trip and some of the images out of GCam via OnePlus 8T were just awesome, stunning. OnePlus Camera simply couldn’t capture anything of milkyway night sky shots.
