Night Sight: Seeing in the Dark on Pixel Phones | Hacker News Reader

Night Sight: Seeing in the Dark on Pixel Phones

ai.googleblog.com

152 pointsdsr1285 comments

A big recent thread about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18301745

This feature is honestly amazing. I had serious doubts about Google's claims with Night Sight, but The Verge has a great article[1] that uses the pre-release APK and the results are nothing short of spectacular.

On a side note, I hadn't bought a new phone in 4 years and decided to spring for the new Pixel 3 XL. Very satisfied so far.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18021944/google-night-si...

If the Pixel had a headphone jack, I would probably buy one as well. But that's the thing...

You might as well get used to no headphone jack, they're not going to make a come back.

Can you imagine? Industry is headed in one direction and they do a full switch back.. I guess that’s what some people are hoping for.

Seriously. This argument is getting old. Bluetooth headphones aren't that difficult to find cheap now anyways. Are people really that attached to their old wired headphones?

* Bluetooth headphones are VASTLY more expensive compared to wired equivalents.

* Bluetooth headphones are a nightmare to temporarily pair to devices.

* AUX is a standard available on all devices in decades.

* Bluetooth headphones needs to be charged.

* Blueetoth headphones have a very limited lifespan because you can't replace batteries in them.

* AUX is quick, pairing to your friends car for a 15 minute drive - nope.

* Bluetooth is quite buggy. AUX is not.

As someone who has bluetooth headphones, bluetooth in car, wifi casting at home - lack of 3.5mm is still a deal breaker. I'm so happy my new phone has it (last one had an adapter that I couldn't bring with me constantly (oh and it started to glitch on me after a year...).

* There are places where you shouldn't be using wireless.

* Bluetooth don't work where there is interference, such as near a microwave.

* Bluetooth is a massive security risk.

* Bluetooth allows for tracking.

* Headphone jack is DIRT cheap.

* Because of batteries, longevity etc. they are much worse for the environment.

Bluetooth is still awesome. But ditching the headphone jack is an unequivocal travesty.

You make valid points, I was merely posting that question/pov since I've had Bluetooth headphones for a few years so it hasn't really affected me, and I agree that the industry unfortunately looks like it isn't going back.

I didn't check prices, I just assumed by now we would have access to cheap ones by now since every phone is going Bluetooth only. That's my mistake.

I agree the pairing process can sometimes take a couple minutes, especially if not familiar with the Bluetooth controls on both devices, but I wouldn't call that a nightmare.

I didn't think about the charging aspect, good point. I guess I'm spoiled due to the long battery life of headphones like Bose that I have that never have run out of battery, even on 13 hour flights. But ear buds definitely are a different story. However my Bose's batteries are still running strong years later (they also have a replacable battery) and no, I don't work for Bose, they're just the only Bluetooth ones I've had.

Also I've found AUX cables break over time causing static. Seems comparable to "bugginess" of Bluetooth, but I've never experienced any bugs with these headphones (again I've only owned 2 Bluetooth headphones so I'm uninformed). I'm genuinely curious what bugs Bluetooth headphone connections have, care to elaborate?

Thanks!

You know the Pixel 3 comes with a USB-C to Aux adapter, right? You can still use wired headphones.

Admittedly, you still lose the ability to charge your phone while listening with headphones unless you use wireless charging or find a USB-C splitter.

That just makes it even more infuriating. In what universe is bringing an adapter with a phone a valid thing?

You could "pair" it with your headphones, which works ok if you only use them with your phone (and don't have to decouple them ever) - big if. Also assumes you only have one pair that you use.

But the headphone jack shines for temporary and unexpected situations. Where you don't have your headphones you are out of luck.

Just no, seriously. NO.

Can USB-C splitters charge and output at the same time like the MacBook ones do?

I would answer "yes" to your rhetorical question - People really are that attached to wired headphones. Not having to charge them is a pretty huge benefit. One wonders why we don't all use wireless mice. Same reason.

Wired headphones don't require power & just work with a simple plugging in action.

Cheap Bluetooth devices have fiddly and unreliable stacks, sometimes lack enough power to transmit reliably from my pocket to my headphones, and the necessary audio compression introduces noticeable artifacts into certain types of music.

Bluetooth isn't replacing my $250 pair of Senneheisers or $700 Grado RS-1s.

Some of us care about getting lossless signal while being able to simultaneously charge our phones.

Being honestly curious, do android or iOS phones offer audio quality/signal comparable to standalone headphone amps expensive Senneheiser headphones are designed to perform best with? Disclosure: I also own $500 Senneheiser headphones, but use my Bose Bluetooth ones for my phone.

It depends to a great degree on the volume and impedance of headphones. HD-25s perform quite well at normal volume for music that doesn't have tons of transients for phones with decent DACs.

But it's something you have to actively look for in phones.

I don't want cheap headphones, I want high quality ones. Are they readily available for mobile?

I love my Bose ones, they seem to be as good as my wired Senneheiser ones. That's just my opinion though.

> Are people really that attached to their old wired headphones?

I'm sorry if wanting to spend half as much for better sound offends you, but yes; I much prefer my wired headphones over any bluetooth headphones. Perhaps some $300 bose headphones would win me over, but I doubt they would sound any better than my $150 wired cans. Not to mention that I can plug my headphones into my amp/dac setup when I get home and get sound quality that bluetooth headphones can't even dream of.

I don't really like bending over to the will of the greed-infested industry, and I really don't like that the average person does, but I'll stand for my values as long as I can. I won't buy a phone without a 3.5mm headphone jack until I literally have to.

That's a valid point. Out of curiosity, do phones have good enough audio hardware that makes wired sound better than Bluetooth? IMO (I'm no audio engineer) the new Bluetooth standards have pretty good bandwidth that I'd imagine can transmit rather high bitrate audio. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm genuinely curious.

The original pixel has it, recently bought it myself, and extremely affordable (but I imagine this would vary in different countries).

From where did you buy one? New or used?

Use prisjakt if you are from Sweden, but doubt it will be worthwhile to import from Sweden. Bought the 128 GB version new for about a third of launch price.

Which is quite rare, usually high-end phones don't drop much at all in price but rather get replaced with a new and likely even more expensive version.

It does include a high quality adapter in the box.

That is very impressive

Without pushing the cost astronomically high with f/1,4 lenses, it seems as if Night Sight somehow algorithmically allows the standard f/1,8 camera to shoot two-thirds up and allow for these low-light, long-exposure shots.

It’s honestly an amazing challenge they accepted and quite possible they accomplished their goal.

What do you mean by shoot two thirds up?

I don't think it's physically possible for an f1.8 lens to pretend to be f1.4, it's the physical dimensions of the iris. The only way is by bringing up the ISO which is what every camera does when adjusting exposure.

The lens itself is never going to be able to change, correct.

When we get into implifying the problem by “bringing up the ISO” though, this is where you’ll run into problems. Anybody can raise ISO from 800 to 3200 but then you run the risk of inadvertently producing massive amounts of noise on your photo. This is why Google introduced HDR+ to reduce noise. [0]

So, what Google did, or at least it seems like, is they were able to take an algorithm that will automatically adjust ISO, reduce noise, and allow for low-light conditions that f1,8 glass would never be able to produce cleanly.

[0] http://ai.googleblog.com/2014/10/hdr-low-light-and-high-dyna...

I read that some people have gotten the APK to work on non-pixel devices with decent results.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/9u7srh/pixel_3_cam...

Yup, works fine on my Pixel 2.

I think you may have misread his post.

It's known to work on Pixel 1st and 2nd gen phones (I installed it on my gen 1 XL no problem) but it's not as straightforward for other devices/brands.

Google continues to really take their cameras to the next level. It's just a shame the rest of the hardware doesn't follow suit.

When you say "rest of the hardware" are you referring specifically to Google's Pixel phones? From a hardware perspective, they seem pretty great.

Or, are you referring to the phone industry in general, and how they're unable to make cameras that match the quality of the ones in the Google Pixel line?

I'm referring specifically to Pixel phones. They made weird choices with awkward notches, small storage and RAM, as well as a mediocre at best battery.

> awkward notches

1 notch. Singular. Not plural.

Also, the Pixel 3 does not have a notch. That's only the Pixel 3 XL.

> small storage

wat? My Pixel 3 has 128 gig. That's quite a bit. An SD card slot would be nice to expand it, but I'm still pretty happy with 128. Stores my entire MP3 collection with tens of gigabytes left over for taking pics and recording videos.

> RAM

I'll give you this one. Having only 4 gig feels a bit dated, but I'm not sure if it's really an issue.

> Mediocre at best battery

3,000 mAh is pretty standard. And the Pixel 3 sips the battery pretty lightly. My previous phone was a Motorola Droid Turbo. Even with its 3900 mAh battery, after using GPS + Bluetooth for 90 or so minutes for my commute to/from work, plus about an hour of browsing reddit during breaks at work, I'd come home with 40% left on the battery. With my Pixel 3, with the same usage patterns, I finish the day with about 60% of my battery left.

> 1 notch. Singular. Not plural.

OP said "Pixel phones". A Pixel phone has a notch, Pixel phones have notches.

This is a weird thing to nitpick about.

"Pixel phones have notches" is easily interpreted to mean "ALL Pixel phones have notches", or even that multiple Pixel models have notches.

No, a single model of Pixel, the Pixel 3 XL, has a notch. To say "Pixel phones have notches" is misleading. Pixel 1/2 did not have notches. Pixel 3 does not have a notch. Only the Pixel 3 XL has a notch.

When someone says "I'm not getting a Pixel 3 because it has a notch", it is unclear whether they incorrectly believe that the Pixel 3 has a notch, or if they really mean the Pixel 3 XL and just left off the XL.

It seems like a nitpick, sure, but I think it's important. So much noise is created about the notch in the Pixel 3 XL that I honestly think there are a lot of people that don't realize that the smaller Pixel 3 doesn't have one.

I've had my Pixel 3 XL last for 2 days with pretty moderate to heavy usage without much issue.

Also, I don't know if it's just my phone. But it's been the most unreliable and miserable bluetooth experience I've had in years.

Also, removing the headphone jack for no reason except that it's fashionable right now.

The conceit that it makes it slimmer is ridiculous. Give me a thicker phone to fit in that headphone jack, and while you're at it, fill the rest of the space with battery.

And a floppy disk. An an IEEE-488 interface.

A floppy drive you don't use is bulky and expensive. A 3.5mm jack you don't use makes no perceptible difference.

When you remove features, there should be a net benefit to doing so.

This argument is disingenuous. I hope people would stop spouting it.

There will ALWAYS be an advantage to wired headphones over wireless: reliability and versatility.

Bluetooth headphones can be VERY finicky about who they'll connect to and with how much hassle. They also cannot be plugged into a separate DAC/Amp setup.

Perhaps if it were standard for headphones to allow the user to bypass the bluetooth DAC and run the drivers on our own signal, but I haven't really seen this on affordable headphones.

This argument is equally disingenuous because you're implying that you simply can't use wired headphones of any kind. You can still get wired headphones without a headphone jack and just use the USB-C port.

And demolish any supposed gains in size and weight from removing the jack in the first place.

The thing that gets me is, removing the headphone provides no benefit whatsoever for the vast majority of users. A few grams and some fraction of a millimeter aren't enough for you to feel the difference in your hand. If you don't use wired headphones, you gain no advantage from removing the jack. If you do use wired headphones, there's a substantial disadvantage to removing the jack. So if it doesn't benefit anyone, why do it?

They also cannot be plugged into a separate DAC/Amp setup.

It's a telephone. It's not a giant stereo rack system with hipster vacuum tubes all around. That's where your audiophile wired headphones go.

Ok, yeah, you can exaggerate the desire for backwards compatibility, but when you change to NOT use the standard that's not the same thing at all. I believe wired headphones to still be the standard item of choice for listening, as evidenced by the extremely common need for a dongle.

when you change to NOT use the standard that's not the same thing at all

The standard is Bluetooth now. It's time to take a giant leap into the 90's.

> The standard is Bluetooth now.

It absolutely isn't. It probably will be in a while, assuming they can get at least some of the sync issues ironed out, but it's not the current standard any more than electric cars are.

Rows upon rows of headphones in stores everywhere beg to differ. It's an emerging standard, absolutely, but I have no desire to have to charge me headphones.

I prefer better water and dust resistance over having a headphone jack.

Doesn't make much difference when you've got a wide-open power/data port right there. Unless you're using a water-resistant case with folding rubber plugs, in which case you just close the one over the headphone jack and never think about it again.

I get that some people never used wired headphones and don't care about the headphone jack either way. It confuses me that so many people are urgently trying to make out like this is a net positive for the average user.

Pixel hardware is pretty mediocre in most other respects.

The article flatly states "Night Sight works best on Pixel 3" and although it directly attributes this to "our learning-based white balancer is trained for Pixel 3, so it will be less accurate on older phones" the article also mentions other things the Pixel 3 does better than other phones due to better processor; Pixel 2 has a Snapdragon 835 and Pixel 3 sports a Snapdragon 845.

Sort of like Intel releases i3, i5, i7 and i9 processors so consumers may choose a price and performance point it may be time for Google to differentiate handsets on more than just screen size.

I didn't find the Pixel 2 to Pixel 3 upgrade compelling enough to spend hundreds upgrading a year old phone. Had Google released a high-performance version targetting power users with the Snapdragon 850 with a larger camera element that would really be something to think about.

As it is Red will probably capture that market if they offer a decent sensor as a component, essentially stealing Google's phone-as-components concept from their now defunct Project Ara. Google doesn't seem inclined to supply outboard accesories so I'm not suggesting they do the same, instead as I mentioned earlier maybe they release a power user version of the phone with top of the line components integrated instead. It would be understood the tradeoff for higher performance and better features is battery life.

Yes, I could see iOS devices doing this too, since they already are taking multiple exposures with live photos all the time. Just boost the exposure parameter on one or two and you get the same result.

The point cloud in the "portrait camera" can also be used to map and determine whats there too and the software could decide to draw and brighten it.

What I like about it is that iOS hardware does keep up, complementing your observations about the limitations of Google's solutions.

As detailed in the linked article, it is a lot more complicated than just adding longer exposures to an HDR shot.

But Huawei has done the same thing with their phones, so it is not some secret tech exclusive to Google. The hardware is present in iOS.

I think the Pixel 3 (regular) is the best phone of this year.

I don't know about that. For being a phone that touts long term support it doesn't seem terribly future proof with the amount of RAM and storage it has, as well as having a pretty regular battery that is certain to really degrade by the time support ends.

iPhone XS ($1,000): 4GB of RAM, starts at 64GB of storage, and has a 2,658mAh battery[1]

Pixel 3 ($800): 4GB of RAM, starts at 64GB of storage, and has a 2,915 mAh

Pixel 3 looks future ready to me.

[1] Apple, supposedly the gold standard for long term smart phone support, has already added last years iPhone 8 (2,675mAh) and iPhone X (2,716mAh) to its throttling list: https://www.macworld.com/article/3317689/apple-phone/iphone-...

We're comparing different ecosystems. What's good for Apple, in a tightly controlled ecosystem, may not match Android, where requirements and phone capabilities can be much less restrained, and competition for more RAM and storage is healthy.

We’re not comparing Android in general to iPhones. We’re comparing Pixel phones which Google controls with a similar care to Apple’s ecosystem. There have been reviews of Pixel phones that say they perform more smoothly than other Android phones with more RAM. Google also provides an integrated cloud storage system for Pixels that many customers consider better than Apple’s for iPhones (Google Photos is popular).

In practice, Google Photos is excellent. I don't worry about my photos: they sync to the cloud and I can delete them from the device to save space. Being able to search through my photos by person or even object ('cat') is convenient when looking for that one photo.

Also, for someone who often does informal photo sessions for friends or strangers, being able to share links to groups or albums of photos is super convenient. They can download the full album as a .zip, too.

Pair this with the Pixel's excellent camera, and I don't even miss my mirrorless M4/3rds. The only thing I find myself consistently missing is a good telephoto. I know Moment makes a case and accompanying lenses, but I use the $40 Google case.

I'd say it's a very fair comparison. Google controls the Pixel ecosystem and Apple controls the iPhone.

The difference here would be if Apple competitors made phones that worked with apple software.

Okay, so they have roughly the same specs. Have you seen the benchmark numbers? That iPhone will eat the Pixel for lunch have a galaxy for dessert. Android phones need a lot more hardware to be future proof.

"Future proof" != RAM and battery. See any Apple device. "Future proof" is works well (fast, latest updates) 3 years from now.

3 years from now is nothing. I still have old Android devices that get used as media players and "smart" displays/remotes because I could install slimmed-down OS builds to keep them running smoothly long after official support stopped.

I had to stop using my 3rd gen iPad after official updates made it so slow it was a chore to use as more than an eReader. No option to install an older or 3rd party build. No way to repurpose it for much else at this point.

I look at it like an old "smart tv" versus an old PC. The PC can always get a lightweight Linux build or something else to make it useful. The tv gets what's on it, the end.

Our iPad 2 has also been mostly out of commission since iOS 9. Use it answer text messages now.

I wish there was an app combo to stack images in post on the laptop. There are choices to be made (dynamic range for one), and when done in such a way there is almost unlimited computing power.

There are a few astrophotography apps, but they don't use accelerometer data and aren't particularly suited for uneven motion blur AFAIK.

IIRC Astrophotography stacking app is DeepSkyStacker for if anyone interested

I agree that photo stacking is sorely underrepresented in photo editing software.

That's with a tiny cell phone imager. Combined with a real color night vision imager [1] the results should be as good as daylight.

[1] https://www.x20.org/color-night-vision/

The final example picture is from downtown Galt (Cambridge), Waterloo region. I wonder if some of this work was done at the Kitchener engineering office?

Here's the same angle on Maps: https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.3598564,-80.3149752,51a,35y,2...

Is anyone doing the equivalent for the iPhone?

No reason they couldn’t. It would just involve some fairly advanced algorithms, so it is not trivial. But the hardware is there. Apple could release this in a update if they wanted. Doubt it will happen till next year though.

It's been the case since the Pixel 1 that if you want the best in class camera - buy Pixel.

If you are happy to wait, sure maybe it'll come to iOS - Google are unlikely to stop their efforts though.

Night vision is best in class for sure. But it is quite a stretch to claim that pixel still has the best camera. The anandtech review of the Pixel 3 consistently said that in daylight the iPhone Xs and Galaxy S9 produced better photos. They just have better hardware. As amazing as software is, you can only do so much to make up for lower class hardware.

This[1] is probably the closest you'll get. Made by the guy who runs the computational photography group at Google.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/synthcam/id412992079

I’m wondering if you can run some of these algorithms yourself on existing live photos? They’ve already captured a bunch of frames for you.

They'll release it someday and name it Dark Retina Magic or some sort.

Do the links to the full resolution images result in a 401 for anyone else?

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