The Pixel 2 had arguably the best smartphone camera on the market, and Google wants to make sure it stays that way. During its Pixel unveiling today, it introduced a raft of new camera features for the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3XL smartphones, including an improved zoom, wider-angle camera, smile and blink detection, bokeh control and more -- all with just a single lens on the back. The quality is apparently good enough for Terrence Malick, who shot a video that was featured at the event, so it might be good enough for the rest of us, too.
Some of the features are enabled with the fresh hardware, to be sure. There's a brand new 12.2-megapixel sensor on the back, with a sharper wide-angle lens to allow for zooming. On the front, you get a pair of wide-angle lenses in that large notch, letting you adjust the zoom level via a slider.
However, most of the heavy lifting is done by Google's AI, which can handle HDR+ chores, merge multiple photos for zooming and low light and pick the best photo from a sequence. It's much more powerful than ever thanks to the Visual Core co-processor Google developed in conjunction with Intel. The chip powers more camera features than it did on the Pixel 2, and is powerful enough that you don't need to be online to get the benefits.