Zoom Enhance has been a long time coming – it’s a feature that Google first announced almost a year ago at the Pixel 8 launch – but now it’s finally arrived.
The feature will be available on the Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL and Pixel 9 Pro Fold on day one, and it’s also now rolling out to the Pixel 8 Pro – sadly, the standard Pixel 8 and Pixel 9 miss out.
While it remains to be seen how well Zoom Enhance will work, it could be hugely beneficial to fans of long-distance photography. The feature uses AI to interpolate information between the existing pixels in an image to create detail, so that you can zoom further into photos after you’ve taken them, without losing quality.
Big zoom skills
As a reminder, the Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL and Pixel 8 Pro already have 5x optical zoom, along with 30x Super Res Zoom (a digital zoom that uses AI to enhance details when taking a photo).
So there was plenty of zoom potential here already, and Zoom Enhance just adds to that, letting you zoom in even more after you’ve taken a photo, or zoom into shots that you neglected to zoom for at the time of taking them.
And this is just one of many AI camera features you’ll find on the Pixel 9 line. There’s also the likes of Super Res Zoom Video (for AI enhanced video zoom), Video Boost to upscale videos, Add Me, which let the person who’s taken a group photo add themself to it, and a new Reimagine feature in Magic Editor, which lets you completely transform the photos you take.
Those are just a few examples, so for AI-boosted photography – and particularly AI-boosted zoom – the Pixel 9 Pro series could be the phones to purchase. Still, you might want to wait for our full reviews before you hit the buy button.