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Google Pixel 6/6 Pro Revealed! 😱 Why Google Tensor SoC MATTERS for photography?
The Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are now official revealed but why does the Google Tensor Software on Chip (SoC) matter for photography? Will this allow the Pixel 6 to have the best camera on any smartphone in 2021?
🔗 Official Blog Post https://blog.google/products/pixel/google-tensor-debuts-new-pixel-6-fall/
🔗 Twitter Thread https://twitter.com/madebygoogle/status/1422226005339557889
📹 The Verge Video https://youtu.be/HcGJQFE-xa4
📹 MKBHD Video https://youtu.be/7hEPj13PUGc
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- Google Pixel 4a vs 3500$ DSLR https://youtu.be/4KY9rIr0ifE
- Google Pixel 4a Review https://youtu.be/7wNDXsDKoCg
- Astrophotography with your phone https://youtu.be/LwnMOsq0Mpk
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📖 CHAPTERS 📖
00:00 - Introduction
01:17 - New sensors & lenses
03:40 - New Google Tensor SoC
05:46 - How does it help for photography?
08:33 - What should we expect
09:46 - Conclusion
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Okay. So I was on the camping trip this weekend and taking a lot of pictures with my Google Pixel 4a, Google announcing pretty amazing news about the upcoming Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. They didn't share all the details, but it did share some information that is pretty important for the photography aspect of the phone. So let's talk about it and let's talk by rolling the intro. I'm Loïc Bellemare-Alford, a young photographer and filmmaker on a journey to become better at this art. I usually don't read rumors about upcoming tech products because I always end up being disappointed when they announced it officially, because there's always something that was expecting that is missing inside of the product. But this is an official tease from Google, and I'm going to put the links for the blog posts and also the Twitter thread in the description down below, so you can go check them out by yourself. I'm also going to put my software engineering hat on so I can talk about some of the details they said instead of the blog posts are a little bit more technical and why they matter for us photographers using our phone. There are two main things they announced inside of their blog posts and Twitter threads. And the first one is that they're building their own system on chip or SOC. This confirms a rumor that they were building their own processor with the codename inside of the company of "Whitechapel". The second thing is that it talked about the new sensors and also new lenses, which are very important for photographing let's get started by talking about the new sensors and the new lenses. Inside of their blog article, they said that "the improved sensors and lens are now too big to fit into the traditional square - so the new design gives a whole camera system, a new home with the camera bar". So they did unveil the new design. And that's when there's a huge bar in the back for bigger sensors and for bigger lenses. Inside of the video from The Verge about the Google pixel 6, Dieter Bohn confirmed that there's an ultra wide angle lens or normal wide angle lens, and also a telephoto lens inside of the Google 6 Pro. So this is very exciting because one thing that was missing inside of the original Google Pixel 4a or Google Pixel 5 was a telephone lens. So I made a comparison between my DSLR and the phones and the quality of the zoom just wasn't good on these phones. So this is very exciting for me to have a telephoto lens, because I use it all the time for landscape or portraits or things like that. And it's a pretty cool thing that they said inside of The Verge video is that it's going to be using a periscope lens. That's basically, you're allowed to get from 2 to 4 times the zoom without losing any quality at all inside of the shots. So that's really exciting about the new lenses and a pretty cool thing is that they say that the sensors that can be bigger. And if the sensors are bigger, it's basiically going to allow to have more light, inside of the shots are going to get better image quality, especially in low light situations. So let's see when you're using nightside or for the astrophotography mode, there's also a misconception that sometimes you want to have more megapixels, but if you get more megapixels instead of your sensor, but you don't have bigger pixels, you're not ending with more, are better quality of images because you're only increasing the megapixels, but not the size of each pixels that is capturing the light and the bigger the pixel is the more light you're going to get inside of a sensor and the better image you're going to get in the end. This seems to be confirming some of the rumors. That's going to be two 50 megapixels sensors in the back in one of 16 megepixels but I wouldn't expect to get some pictures that are 50 megapixels out of the sensor instead, I'm pretty sure that Google is going to go on the route of using a technique that is called pixel binding, that uses four pixel, that are side-by-side merges them to get her inside of one pixel. And this allows to get better images at night or during the daytime, by getting more information from four pixels and creating one pixel at the end. So we're still probably going to have 12 megapixel images in the end, but don't quote me on this. This is just speculation from my part. And based on what I know and how some of the techniques work for other smartphones. The other very important thing to talk about is the new SOC or system on chip that is called Google Tensor. So Google send inside of the blog post that "Tensor is our first custom built SOC specially for pixel phones". So this is basically saying that it's only going to be coming for Google Pixel phones. You might not know what is an SOC, because not very common for people that are not inside of the tech world, but it basically means that are putting different components all inside of one component to get some better performances out of it. So usually hear about some things like processors Ram, some special chips, like the Titan chip for security inside of the pixel phones, or maybe some of the AI modules that were inside of the Pixel 4. So by combining all of these different chips, inside of one custom chip, you're able to get some much better performances because you can really make a chip that works for your phone and for the things that are important inside of that phone. So Apple already does this with their A series of chips inside of their phones. And that's why they can get such good performances and better life out of their phone because they can really control everything instead of the processor and inside of that module, that combines everything from memory processor, AI processing, and everything else like that. So this is what Google has been trying to reproduce for their own phones. You might not understand up to now why this is so important for photography, but basically they're going to be allowed to get much more out of the processor when treating photos. So for example, these days, they use a lot of AI when processing the photos. So instead of doing the processing of the AI on a general processing unit, so a CPU from Qualcomm, they can actually instead do all of this inside of the AI module and use a CPU for other things at the same time. So you should say much better performances inside of the camera at the end, and there going to be able to use much more AI instead of the camera. They also talked a lot about AI, so we're definitely be seeing more AI features instead of the camera, but in a pretty cool thing about AI is it's going to be able to do some things like Google Assistant, but directly on the phone, instead of having to send all that data back to the servers and to get a response afterwards. So this is pretty cool for privacy or when you're offline and you still want to use some AI features on your phone. I still haven't really answered the question of why this is so important that they're building their own SOC for photography. You need to understand that Google is a software first company and hardware isn't the parent, or that they're best at building it, but this is still a huge improvement that are building their own SOC and a huge leap in terms of hardware. But it's still on the software side they're probably going to have the best benefits. If you don't really understand software is what is running inside of the processor. So the SOC they're building. So that's why they're really going to be able to push it to the maximum and get the best results out there possible. It's still kind of a feat that they're using a four year old sensor on the Google Pixel 4a, and at this phone can compete with a thousand dollar phones out there. And this is because they really extract all the information from the sensor and then you software to do the maximum from this small and old sensor. So using a new sensor and a better processor is definitely going to help them get some better results. Okay. So what should we expect in terms of photographing for the Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. These are just speculations of things that I think might be coming inside a phone, but not confirm that also don't take my word for it, but I'm pretty sure we're going to be getting some real time portrait mode. So we're going to be able to see the blur in the background, and I'm pretty sure that portrait mode is going to be much better at detecting edges or complex subjects like flowers or things like that. So I'm pretty sure to portrait mode is going to be one of the huge updates of this new SOC and the AI capabilities. I'm also sure we're going to be getting some better Night Sight photos and also astrophotography mode photos, because by using the AI and also the bigger sensors, they're going to have so much more information to work with and creates a much better pictures, in the end, so I'm really excited to see the results in that department. I also think that just in general, most of the automatic edit that goes inside of an image afterwards is going to be much better and much faster. So we might get rid of this, the little annoying processing. Once you take a picture on the Google Pixel 4a and see directly the results right afterwards. There's also some really huge news on the video department. So that was a confirmed by Marques Brownlee or MKBHD, and also from the video from The Verge, and that's basically that the photo features are also coming to the video mode. So we're finally getting rid of the over sharpening inside of the video mode. And I'm pretty sure that for the first time, the video mode on a Google Pixel phone, instead of the Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro is going to be as good of some of the competition, like the iPhone Samsung phones, Huawei, and many phones like that. This was one of the biggest problems inside of Google Pixel 4a. And it was simply that the video mode wasn't good at all. And I basically never used it because the video that came out of it just didn't look good. So this video can fix the video inside of the Google Pixel 6 or 6 pro. This is going to be a huge improvement for the phone to get some better video out of it without having to use a second device. Okay. So we don't have all the details yet the official event to announce the Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are coming later this fall. There's no news about the Google Pixel 5a up to now. So I'm not sure what is happening with that. But I think what is really important to understand here is that Google seems to be finally taking their phones really seriously. And they want to create a phone that is as good or better than the iPhone, especially on the camera department. You might not remember, but when the first Google Pixel phone came out, it had a better photo mode than any of the other smartphones out there since then iPhone, Samsung, Huawei, and multiple other brands quickly cashed up and got some photos that are pretty much the same as the Google Pixel phones. But with this new SOC and new sensors, it might be the another time that Google takes the leads in terms of photo and video modes on their phone. If you're as excited as I am for that phone and you have the budget to buy it, it's probably going to be a pretty expensive phone, you should go on the Google store and you're going to be able to be notified once it comes out. So I already added my name. So I'm going to get a notification and I'm definitely going to be buying the Google Pixel 6 Pro to test out all these crazy new features in terms of photographing, because this is a phone I have been waiting for a really long time. If you enjoyed this video, please let me know by hitting the like button below and also consider subscribing for more content on photographing filmmaking, I'm going to be having a new series on mobile photography coming out really soon. So definitely stay tuned for that one. So sse you in the next one. Bye-bye.
Video Links
- 🔗 Official Blog Post
- 🔗 Twitter Thread
- 📹 The Verge Video
- 📹 MKBHD Video
- Google Pixel 4a vs 3500$ DSLR
- Google Pixel 4a Review
- Astrophotography with your phone
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What is this video about?
The Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are finally official, and honestly, I'm excited because Google seems to be taking their phones seriously again. They've announced two major things: a custom-built system on chip called Tensor, and new hardware with bigger sensors and better lenses. Let me explain why this actually matters for photography.
First, the hardware. Google's moving away from the traditional square camera bump and introducing a camera bar that's large enough to house bigger sensors and new lenses. For the 6 Pro, this includes a telephoto lens—which has been missing from recent Pixels and is something I use constantly for portraits and landscapes. They're also using a periscope design to achieve 2-4x zoom without quality loss. More importantly, bigger sensors mean more light capture, which translates to better image quality, especially in low light situations like Night Sight or astrophotography.
There's a misconception that more megapixels automatically means better photos, but that's not how it works. The size of individual pixels matters more than the pixel count. I'm speculating they'll use pixel binning—merging four pixels into one—to extract more detail and improve night photography while keeping the final resolution at 12 megapixels, similar to their current approach.
Now, the Tensor chip. This is the big deal. Google has built their first custom chip specifically for Pixel phones, combining the CPU, RAM, AI modules, and specialized processors into one component. Why does this matter for photography? Google is a software-first company, and their strength has always been in computational photography. With their own SOC, they can dedicate AI processing directly to the camera instead of relying on general-purpose processors. This means faster, smarter image processing—and it stays on your phone instead of sending data to servers.
Based on what I'm seeing, I expect real-time portrait mode with better edge detection, significantly improved Night Sight and astrophotography, and faster overall processing so you see results instantly instead of waiting. The biggest news though? Video features are finally coming to the video mode. The Pixel 4a's video was oversharped and rarely usable for me, but combining Tensor's processing with better sensors could finally bring Pixel video quality up to par with iPhones and Samsung flagships.
We don't have all the details yet—the full reveal is coming later this fall—but this feels like a genuine leap. Google is making a serious move to reclaim leadership in mobile photography, and I'm definitely getting the 6 Pro to test it out.