What you need to know
- Google is making a few tweaks to its camera, including a more prominent position for Night Sight.
- There's a new rewind feature in the works that's currently dubbed McFly.
- The update also removes the ability to manually set color balance.
- Front-facing flash gets renamed to Illumination as there's no physical flash module on the phone.
Night Sight launched last year on the Pixel 3 series, effectively letting the camera see in the dark. The feature also made its way to older Pixels, and while it's a landmark addition to Google's camera, it wasn't the easiest to access as it was tucked away in the More tab in the interface.
That's all set to change with an upcoming update to Google Camera, as spotted by 9to5Google. Version 6.3 brings a host of tweaks, including moving Night Sight to the main camera UI next to the Portrait mode. That position is currently taken up by Panorama, which is being moved to the More tab.
The minor change makes accessing Night Sight much more convenient, as all it takes now is a few swipes on the camera interface. Google will also continue to show the Night Sight suggestion pill in the main camera mode in low-light scenarios.
Another major addition is McFly mode, an obvious reference to Back to the Future. As 9to5Gogole notes the name coupled with mentions of rewind suggest Google is coming up with a feature to let you play videos in reverse. We'll have to wait and see until the feature goes live to see what it has to offer.
In addition, Google is offering advice on how to take better selfies, and the teardown of the Camera 6.3 APK also found references to the Pixel 4. Google is also removing the thermometer icon from all modes, which lets you manually adjust the color temperature. Google is data-driven like no other manufacturer, so it must've felt that the feature was getting little to no usage.
Other tweaks include changing the flash icon in the front-facing camera to a bulb to better highlight the feature. There's no physical flash module on the phone, so Google is renaming the label from Flash to Illumination. There's no auto mode for the front-facing flash, but you will be able to toggle Illumination on or off to let the screen light up when taking selfies. The feature will go live in the next update to Google Camera, and is part of a larger set of changes coming to Android Q, which includes another tweak to navigation gestures.
