Google Camera Go: Review on Honor 9 Lite

In my old post about the four new Nokia phones (link in the end), you must know that the Nokia 1.3 came with Google Camera Go which was made for people who want to use GCAM but don't have Camera2API enabled. According to Google, this processes the image like GCAM and so you would get the best quality. It is also lightweight and is just 12MB. So can it give wonderful results on average camera phones? Let's see. 

I first downloaded this on my Redmi Go but in that, it had a bug in the viewfinder. It also produced dark results. There was neither an HDR option nor the Night Mode Google promised. The portrait mode was also buggy and always blurred my face. 

But a new version soon came and it fixed the portrait mode and brought an HDR feature. The viewfinder bug was still present though. And the HDR is also broken. So I request the developers to fix this. 

Viewfinder Bug on Redmi Go

So, I downloaded this on Honor 9 Lite. It has a pretty average camera and I had previously installed the original GCAM on it. There were some storage issues with GCAM. But there is no such problem with GCAM Go. 

But I request Google to add an option to save the photos to SD Card. And if you want to download this port and the full-size camera samples, I'll give a link to download them at the end. 

Now I didn't go to that many places for taking camera samples but I have taken photos in various lighting conditions. I'll give points for individual samples. 1 point for the winner and 0 for the loser. I hope you like the camera comparison. 

COLOR TEST

I used a set of Oil Pastels to test the colours of the photos. I will just compare the colours of each pastel on both the photos. I didn't use HDR with the stock camera either. As you can see in the images, there is no issue of colour tones with both. The colour contrast is natural and there is no issue with white balance, colour temperature or saturation. So I would call it a tie. 

Colour Test

DAYLIGHT SHOTS

I am really sorry that I couldn't get proper daylight shots because of the rains. But let's first see the samples. 

The first sample is of around 1 PM. I used HDR on both but with GCAM Go, the feature was broken. On first sight, you can see that the stock camera image is better exposed and has a better dynamic range. But the scene changes when you zoom into the photos. The photo taken by the GCAM Go has much better details and textures but it also introduced a lot of grain in the photo. The better dynamic range gives a point to the stock camera. 

Daylight Shot 1

I took another daylight shot at about 7 PM just before sunset. I again used HDR on both but it didn't apply the effect on GCAM Go. Like the previous photo, the stock camera had much better dynamic range. But this time, I found the details to be very similar on both phones. So that's a point for the stock camera. 

LOW-LIGHT SHOTS

So let's see the low-light samples which I took at around 10 PM. There is no night mode on either camera apps and so I used HDR. Again it didn't apply the effect on GCAM Go. I would give a direct win to the stock camera here. The image is much brighter on the stock camera. The camera sample of GCAM Go is almost black and unusable. So I won't compare the details. A point for the stock camera. 

 Though the images are bad on both, that's mainly the problem with the phone I used. Your phone's stock camera might give much better results and it might even have a dedicated night mode. The GCAM Go's image will be unusable because of no Night Mode and broken HDR. 

Low-Light Sample

INDOOR SHOTS

I clicked an indoor shot at around 1 PM on both. I used HDR but the effect didn't apply on GCAM Go. The photos on both look very similar. The exposure is decent in both the images. But when I zoomed in, the details are almost the same. But I noticed a lot of noise in the image taken by the GCAM Go. So the stock camera has an edge here and so I give it a point. 

Indoor Shots

MACRO SHOTS

So let's come to the macro shots. The first one is a macro shot taken outdoors. I didn't use HDR in this image. The photo taken by the stock camera is far ahead of GCAM Go. It has a much better dynamic range and when zoomed in, the details and textures are also better. The colours are also very similar. So I would easily give a point to the stock camera. 

Outdoor Macro Shot

I took another macro shot indoors and this time the case was a little different. The image was again taken without HDR and the exposure was good on both. The details and texture were better on the GCam Go but there was noise. So again, I would give a point to the stock camera. 

Indoor Macro Shot 

CONCLUSION

So you might have figured out that GCAM Go couldn't match the stock camera. And this is not just the case with Honor 9 Lite. I also used GCAM Go on some other phones briefly. On Redmi Note 7 Pro and it couldn't produce photos as good as the stock camera. So Google Camera Go is just a disappointment. So here's the final tally.

I have uploaded the full-size camera samples on Google Drive and if you want to see those, I've given the link down below. I have even uploaded the APK of the GCAM Go I was using. You can download it to test on your device.  So that's it for today. Goodbye. 

Download Link:- Google Drive

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