Google: Pixel 3 bug does stop some photos being saved but we have a fix coming
Google will soon roll out a fix for a bug in its new Pixel 3 and 3 XL that's infuriating users who discover that some photos taken are not being saved. Until the fix arrives, users will need to be careful with their snaps.
Smartphones
"We will be rolling out a software update in the coming weeks to address the rare case of a photo not properly saving," Google said, confirming that the fix will be also be delivered to the Pixel and Pixel XL, and Pixel 2 and 2 XL devices.
The Pixel's camera bug is probably the worst of several issues that appear to be related to Google's memory-management optimizations.
Other problems include that opening the camera while using the Pixel to stream Spotify frequently kills the stream.
Android Police's Artem Russakovskii also reports that the Pixel 3 XL can only handle between two or three apps in memory before they need to reload.
Some Android fans are now questioning whether Google messed up the Pixel 3 and 3 XL by only giving it 4GB of RAM, compared with, say, the OnePlus 6, which has 6GB of RAM.
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One thing Google can't fix now is a shortage of memory, but it may be able to fix these problems if it's a memory-management bug.
Reviewers at 9to5Google have also found memory issues in the Pixel 3 XL.
It is a shame that unsaved photos are causing dissatisfaction with the Pixel 3 and 3 XL, which have otherwise received top marks for the camera.
Unlike many of today's flagships that use two rear cameras, Google opted to use just one rear camera powered by Google's innovations in 'computational photography'.
As Google distinguished engineer Marc Levoy told CNET recently, the Pixel 3's Super Res Zoom, a computational photography feature, allows its single camera to come "very close" to a phone's second camera with 2X optical zoom.
The other AI-powered camera feature is Top Shot, which takes multiple snaps of a face and picks the best one. It was also trained on a large database of human faces.
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