Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The Google Pixel 8 Pro will apparently come with a Night Sight Video option.
- It’s also believed that the Pixel 8 line will keep a physical SIM slot.
- This comes after leaked renders didn’t show the SIM slot.
Google was part of the first wave of brands to offer a night mode for photography, offering its so-called Night Sight mode in 2018. Now, it sounds like the firm will bring this concept to video on the Pixel 8 series.
9to5Google reports that the Pixel 8 Pro will get a Night Sight Video feature for higher-quality low-light video, citing its own sources. This would be a welcome addition as the only recourse Pixel users have for brighter low-light video right now is to switch to a lower frame rate. But a lower frame rate can only go so far to help, so we’re glad to see a dedicated mode here.
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Google wouldn’t be the first brand to offer night mode video, though. We’ve previously seen these features on phones from the likes of OPPO and Xiaomi. In OPPO’s case, the company has long offered a 4K night video mode on its premium phones, using its custom imaging chip to offer noise reduction and HDR in this mode. So we’re guessing Google would lean on its Tensor G3 chipset to offer similar improvements.
In saying so, we hope the standard Pixel 8 gets Night Sight Video capabilities too. After all, it’s expected to offer the same chipset and main camera sensor as the Pixel 8 Pro. So there doesn’t seem to be any technical reason why the cheaper phone wouldn’t get the feature.
Physical SIMs are here to stay (for now)
There was also speculation last month that the Pixel 8 series wouldn’t offer a physical SIM slot after it turned out that the feature was missing in leaked renders. But 9to5Google reports that the Pixel 8 line will indeed keep this slot.
We’re glad to hear this as transferring a mobile plan to a new phone is much easier with a physical SIM than doing so with an eSIM. In saying so, Google is reportedly working on easier eSIM transfers in Android 14. But this will ostensibly require your old device to have Android 14 too.
Either way, it sounds like Google isn’t quite ready to take the Apple route and offer eSIM only in the US. And we hope Android OEMs continue to offer physical SIM support in the future for maximum flexibility.
