There are a few great things to highlight on the Pixel 10 series. Google would be quick to tell you that all of the Gemini-powered features are the selling points, and we’ve already discussed our love for magnets, but we’d also like to argue that the Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL’s Pro Res Zoom is really quite amazing.
It doubles as two features for me: The first one is a tool, allowing me to zoom in up to 100x on an object and come away with an actually usable photograph. The second is a party trick. I was recently up in Seattle with friends when I had an opportunity to take a photo of the Space Needle from quite a distance away. The AI-powered results left the iPhone-toting friends speechless. “What, my phone can’t do that!,” they said in what could best be described as disbelief. Sorry, suckers.
Harnessing onboard AI juices, Pro Res Zoom utilizes both software and hardware to make the feature work. Google highlighted how it works back with the release of the Pixel 7 Pro, mentioning things like “remosaicing” and HDR+ with Bracketing. Personally, the fact that it just works is all I care about. The results speak for themselves. While some shots are borderline magical, others still show the limitations of the technology. For example, if trying to zoom in on text, don’t expect AI to pick up on it. Chances are that any small text will result in a blob-like appearance.
We have examples of Pro Res Zoom in action below. From our testing, it works quite well on objects, but won’t help you very well with people, animals, or the aforementioned tiny text. The AI seems to struggle with those things. While some shots look more artificial than others, Pro Res Zoom has been a really cool feature to play with. We’ve linked to a Google Photos album for full-res viewing. Our gallery plugin has a tendency to compress photos really hard.
On the left we have the shots before Pro Res Zoom and on the right we have the end results.
If you have been playing with Pro Res Zoom yourself, feel free to share your opinions below. And if you have an iPhone, tell us how much you wish your phone did this, too. Believe me, when I sometimes use an iPhone, it’s stuff like this that I miss the most.
Keep it up, Google.
