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Another Pixel 5 hands-on reveals ‘audio zoom’ for video, revamped camera UI [Video]

Google’s Pixel 5 is still a couple of weeks from its proper release, but some users have managed to get their hands on the phone a bit early. In another unboxing and first-look video, we get another peek at the Pixel 5 and its camera quality, as well as the reveal of a new “audio zoom” feature.

YouTuber “TotallyDubbed” got his hands on a Pixel 5 unit early, and between a video and his Instagram account, we get a few new details about the device. Most interesting is what’s revealed about the camera.

On Pixel 5, Google Camera v7.6 is apparently installed, a step above v7.5, which is currently available on Pixels. That version has a tweaked interface that should feel familiar, but has a new shutter button and darkens some of the other buttons throughout the UI. The camera settings appear nearly identical, though.

Beyond the design, v7.6 also adds “audio zoom” to the Pixel 5. This is a feature we’ve seen pop up a few times before, but it’s never made it to production. Clearly, though, things have finally worked out. Unfortunately there’s no test of this feature in action, so we’ll have to wait a little while to see how it compared to the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra or other phones that have added this feature.

We can also see that the Pixel 5’s ultrawide goes to 0.6x and zooms in to 7x.

In a video, TotallyDubbed unboxes the phone to show us the same accessories another unboxing showed us yesterday. He also goes into benchmarks and a hardware tour, but one of the things that really caught our interest is another set of camera samples. Compared to the Galaxy S10+, the Pixel shows its usual contrasty, natural look that still feels better than Samsung’s overly saturated colors. HDR seems a bit off, though, compared to previous Pixels. That could just be how the show was taken, pre-release software, or perhaps the lack of the Neural Core hurts after all?

A video comparison also shows much less shaky video that also looks rather good at 4k60. The selfie camera test also shows off microphone performance that seems slightly improved.

More on Pixel 5:

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Avatar for Ben Schoon Ben Schoon

Ben is a Senior Editor for 9to5Google.

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