What you need to know
- After being initially announced in October 2023, Google said that Zoom Enhance would come to Pixel 8 Pro users soon in a blog post last week.
- As of yesterday, Pixel 8 Pro owners are starting to see the feature appear as part of a Google Photos app update.
- Google didn’t manage to ship Zoom Enhance on the Pixel 8 series before replacing it with the Pixel 9 series, and lessons can be learned about software promises from this blunder.
Google announced that Zoom Enhance, a feature that was originally revealed before the Pixel 8 Pro officially launched, would finally make its way to that smartphone last week. As of Aug. 19, Pixel 8 Pro users started seeing Zoom Enhance appear in the Google Photos app. The feature, which was first shown off at Google I/O 2023 more than a year ago, should serve as a great example of why you shouldn't buy products based on the promise of future updates.
Zoom Enhance was spotted in version 6.95 of Google Photos, as 9to5Google first reported, on the Pixel 8 Pro. It's designed for use with photos that have already been captured. In the Tools section of the Google Photos app, Zoom Enhance is an option on Pixel 8 Pro phones that have access to it. If you aren't seeing it yet, make sure your Google Photos app is up to date or force stop and restart it.
Google says that this tool will "intelligently fills in the gaps between pixels and predicts fine details." With that being said, don't expect perfection." The company adds that Zoom Enhance "is in its early stages and may generate unexpected or inaccurate results." For some, that might be a tough pill to swallow. Pixel 8 Pro users have been waiting nearly a year to access Zoom Enhance on their smartphones, and now that it's here, it might not work as expected.
The goal of Zoom Enhance is simple. While you can zoom into a photo after it has been taken, the quality of the image will degrade the more you zoom in. Photos could become pixelated, noisy, and lack clarity. Zoom Enhance tries to use generative AI to clear up the noise and increase clarity in images that you're zooming into. It's not unlike other forms of AI upscaling, which we've seen in professional photo editors, video editors, and even PC gaming applications in the past.
However, keeping expectations manageable is crucial. Zoom Enhance won't be able to improve the quality of every image, and like other forms of generative AI, it may struggle specifically with finer details — such as text. Early tests of Zoom Enhance do seem to show an improvement over original photos, but the amount of improvement can vary on a case-by-case basis. To help Google improve Zoom Enhance overall, it's asking users to provide feedback on the results in the Google Photos app.
Buy phones for what they are now, not what they could be later
The problem with Zoom Enhance isn't that the feature is bad — it's that Google took way too long to ship it. We know by now that Pixel phones aren't going to lead the spec sheets or the benchmarks. Instead, the Google Pixel brand is all about creating a holistic experience, and software is a big part of that. You might choose a Pixel over another smartphone due to specific software features; for example, I love the Google Recorder app that's exclusive to Pixel devices.
This situation becomes tricky when Google showcases new features that are said to be coming to Pixel phones at a later date. The Zoom Enhance tool was debuted before the Pixel 8 Pro was available for purchase, and it's possible some buyers picked up a Pixel phone for that feature. If they did, they were probably disappointed to learn that their smartphone wouldn't get access to Zoom Enhance until after the even newer Pixel 9 series was officially unveiled.
Google isn't the only company that shows off upcoming features before they're ready. All companies do it, and I suspect that Apple will tout plenty of Apple Intelligence features with the iPhone 16 series launch despite the fact that those phones won't ship with them. As consumers, we need to be wary of how much stock we put into companies' promises.
Android specifically has made the promise of future updates a key selling point for its platform. Google and Samsung have both marketed their flagships as offering seven years of full OS and security upgrades. While that's great to see on paper, we still don't know what those future "full OS upgrades" will look like. Since Google has already struggled to bring Gemini Nano to the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a, I'm not very optimistic about those later upgrades.
We're seeing all kinds of companies promise future upgrades and market those improvements as a reason to buy a product today. Google taking a year to bring Zoom Enhance to the Pixel 8 Pro is the perfect example of why you shouldn't do that. Buy a product for what it is now, and be pleasantly surprised if it gets better over time.
