GoKawiil
Tech News
Google's Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL include a 48-megapixel telephoto camera offering 5x optical zoom, matching or exceeding zoom specs on rivals like the Galaxy S26 Ultra, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and Xiaomi 17 Ultra. Unlike many competitors, the phone's portrait mode applies shallow depth-of-field effects to subjects beyond human faces, combining this with the telephoto zoom for a distinctive shooting mode.
Android Authority's Robert Triggs tested portrait photography on three flagship phones, examining how each handles skin tones, facial detail and background blur. The Pixel's portrait mode offers a simple zoom-based interface with a default 2x setting, plus finer manual controls for exposure, white balance and blur strength than its rivals provide outside their Pro modes.
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro features a main camera with a wider aperture of f/1.48, compared to the previous model's f/1.78, aiming to enhance background blur in photos. Tests comparing images taken at both apertures under controlled conditions showed only minor differences in depth of field. The study focused on optical effects, excluding computational Portrait mode enhancements.
OpenAI has reportedly acquired Glass Imaging, a Los Altos-based smartphone camera company, for more than $300 million according to the Wall Street Journal. Founded in 2019 by former Apple engineers Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, who helped build Portrait Mode, the startup had raised roughly $30 million before the deal and uses neural networks trained on specific camera hardware to improve image quality directly at capture rather than through post-processing edits.
A photography guide explains that Apple's new iPhone 18 Pro has a slightly wider variable aperture (f/1.48 vs f/1.78) than its predecessor, theoretically producing shallower depth of field. However, it outlines four techniques—Portrait mode, Macro mode, shooting close to a subject, and using the telephoto lens—that let owners of older iPhones create similar background-blur effects without upgrading.
Reports suggest Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 Pro lineup will introduce a variable aperture lens on the main camera, a first for the iPhone. It remains unclear whether both the Pro and Pro Max models will get this feature, or just the larger Pro Max, and the wide-angle and telephoto lenses are expected to keep fixed apertures.