PocoPhone F1 with Pixel 3 App

Last year I write about our day-trip to Gibraltar and my then new Panasonic TZ-70 camera. Shortly thereafter we headed off back to blighty and have only just returned to Spain. Our first few days were marvellous but then the weather went sour and so here I am, blogging, staying indoors to keep warm. My favourite phone of the moment is the Xiaomi Pocophone F1 and has been since late last year. From a photography perspective it is pretty hard to fault this phone as the pictures are great, Two of my few gripes have been night-vision quality and limited panorama options and so I’m delighted to announce that thanks to the XDA-developers forum I now have a port of the camera app from the considerably more expensive Google Pixel 3 camera, working a treat on the F1.

Not only does the app enhance low-light handling on the back camera but also offers improved panorama tools in the shape of the Photosphere selection, not to mention slow motion video.

Anyway, as it was raining yesterday, we settled down in one of the local bars and I took out the phone and started experimenting with the new app. Here’s the result, bearing in mind that the weather was fowl and so I had no-where near ideal lighting. The curves are of course due to the panoramic nature of the photo. With the Pixel 3 app, both horizontal and vertical panoramas are easy – with automatic, fast stitching. As  for this photo, it has been scaled for the blog – the original image is around 5,000 pixels wide.