GoKawiilBetween Night Sight mode and its 5x optical zoom lens, last year's phone already offered the best image quality of any foldable. This year, Google has extended its lead by giving the P11PF a new 48-megapixel sensor for its main camera that's larger than before along with a bunch of new tools and features.
Pics snapped in both bright and low light environments were consistently sharper and more detailed than what I got from all of its rivals and I really appreciate Google's new slate of Camera Looks, which allow you to easily pick and customize a handful of onboard color profiles to match your style. Granted, I still prefer Google's default Natural option as it seems to be the most accurate setting. However, it's really nice to be able to quickly switch over to something like Shadows to get a dramatic pic with increased contrast or Digi, for a more nostalgic look that reminds millennials like me of simpler times.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
The other big addition to this year's Pixels is Google's Magic Capture. Instead of needing to hit the shutter button every time you want to record something, you can simply press the dedicated button for Magic Capture, point the phone at your subject and let the phone's AI record the best moments. The result is a handful of images and a single video that often highlights the interesting thing that happened, though things can be a bit hit or miss. I've found that Magic Capture excels when shooting things like sports or dancing, as the P11PF does a good job of saving dynamic poses without you needing to worry about if you hit the shutter at the exact right time. I just wish the processing time for videos was shorter.
On the flipside, when I used Magic Capture to record my four-year-old bouncing around at an indoor playscape, it struggled to grab a nice shot of him going down various slides, though it did end up getting something decent after several attempts. Aside from that, I noticed that occasionally, the phone would automatically suggest when an image needed to be rotated or cropped, which is a small but nice bonus when you're curating your camera roll.
My gripe is that while Super Res Zoom can extend the phone's 5x optical zoom to up to 30x digitally, that's still a far cry from the 120x magnification you get from the regular Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL. Furthermore, the sensors for both the Pro Fold's telephoto (10.8MP) and ultra-wide cameras (10.5MP) are significantly lower resolution than what you get on a standard Pros too (48MP for the telephoto and 48MP for ultra-wide). I get that the P11PF's design makes it more difficult for it to receive the exact same sensors and components used in its siblings, but I feel like out of all the Android phonemakers out there, Google should understand the desire for photo parity across all of its Pro devices.