Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G ultrawide astrophotography feature disabled by Google

(Paradigm credit: Tom'southward Guide)

Google Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G owners have lost the power to employ their phone's astrophotography feature with its ultrawide lens, following a software update which disabled the combination.

Although ultrawide star-snapping was billed as a major characteristic at launch, the Google Camera 8.1 update actually removed the feature in November, and users have only recently noticed. Google itself kept repose about the change, salvage for updating a single support page.

The best phones you can buy
Cheque out the best 5G phones
Plus: Epic Samsung Milky way S21 and S21 Plus leak but revealed all the specs

Even then, this page doesn't explicitly spell out that the capability was removed, only that "On Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel five, astrophotography only works on zoom settings equal to or greater than 1x." Previously, you could select 0.6x zoom to switch from the principal sensor to the ultrawide lens when using astrophotography mode.

In other words, you can nevertheless use astrophotography on your Pixel 5 or Pixel 4a 5G, and you can still utilise the ultrawide lens – merely not together. It'south a surprising move considering Google hyped up the addition of ultrawide lenses when the 2 phones were revealed, including their application for astrophotography.

That said, some users had complained – including on Google'due south back up forums – of an ugly green tint actualization when shooting the stars with the ultrawide lens. It'south possible that Google only disabled the combination due to this lack of quality, either temporarily until a set tin can be found or permanently, should the mistake be intrinsic to the hardware.

Either way it's a shame, not just because the Google Camera 8.1 update also brought a lot of useful features to older Pixel phones but considering Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a owners now have a less capable smartphone than the one they originally bought.

Withal, if the removal but became widely known more than a month after it happened, information technology's probably one of lesser-used features on these two handsets – then Google could have seen ultrawide astrophotography equally an acceptable loss.

James is currently Hardware Editor at Rock Newspaper Shotgun, but before that was Audio Editor at Tom's Guide, where he covered headphones, speakers, soundbars and anything else that intentionally makes noise. A PC enthusiast, he besides wrote computing and gaming news for TG, usually relating to how hard it is to find graphics card stock.