Is getting a P9 a waste of money?

Graphene_wannabe

So I’m on iPhone 15PM and am considering a full switch over to a pixel device to use GOS.

I’ve used GOS before on 6a and while the os was fine,
the phone just felt below mediocre moving from a flagship iPhone then.

I’m considering 9 pro XL, but I’m worried it’s a waste of money if I’m just gonna put GOS on it.

Primary concern behind that being the camera. A lot of the camera features are either fully post-take and processed in the cloud, or post take and processed on the phone.

I wanted to ask what exactly can and can’t the camera app on GOS do? Will I be losing a lot of the on device processing capability on GOS? If so, is it a waste of money to get the top camera product?
(I don’t care about sever sided processing as I wouldn’t use that to begin with, but I want to know what can be done locally without the camera/gallery apps having internet access)?

Thanks!

matchboxbananasynergy

You can use the Pixel Camera on GrapheneOS.

https://grapheneos.org/usage#pixel-camera

Graphene_wannabe I’m considering 9 pro XL, but I’m worried it’s a waste of money if I’m just gonna put GOS on it.

It really depends on one's perspective. From my perspective, GrapheneOS makes better use of the hardware in 8th/9th gen Pixels than Stock OS does for the things that I care about, since we use MTE when Stock OS doesn't beyond a developer option meant for debugging rather than production use.

Hb1hf

Graphene_wannabe

The Pixel camera (hardware) takes amazing outside pictures and videos. Pixel's stock Camera app even has autostabilization for videos that works like a charm.

The issue with the cameras (tested on p7p and p8p) is for scanning documents. They never seem to be able to focus correctly.

Graphene_wannabe

matchboxbananasynergy

Well again in terms of hardware I was referring to camera hardware. I’d hate to invest into the phone for its camera and have pictures look worse than they would in stock OS. But based on what you’ve said I assume this won’t be the case.

Am I correctly understanding that the google camera app can be used without internet access permissions?

Thanks!

leafnose

You’ll still have a 10x optical telelens…

AlphaElwedritsch

Graphene_wannabe Am I correctly understanding that the google camera app can be used without internet access permissions?

Right. Install it and deactivate network access.

Phead

Graphene_wannabe

The camera works just fine. I remember about 1.5 years ago the GrapheneOS team even added support for special hardware access for the google camera app - without it the post-processing of images took minutes. Unless AI is involved in the photo processing I do not see a reason why it would not work properly.

GrapheneOS

Graphene_wannabe GrapheneOS has the same camera functionality as the stock OS. Nothing is missing. It works the same way in any given app on GrapheneOS vs. stock OS. You don't need to use Pixel Camera to take full advantage of all the cameras, hardware accelerated HDR+, HDRnet and Night mode. You can use Pixel Camera for features not provided by our Camera app yet such as H.265 video, Ultra HDR, Portrait mode, more aggressive non-Night HDR+, etc.

GrapheneOS

Phead

I remember about 1.5 years ago the GrapheneOS team even added support for special hardware access for the google camera app - without it the post-processing of images took minutes

The processing happens in the background and took seconds without the hardware acceleration access, not minutes. You're referring to a specific upstream Pixel Camera Portrait mode issue on certain devices. It's not correct info. All the camera functionality in the OS works the same way and people can use Pixel Camera if they want the same app functionality it provides.

Phead

GrapheneOS

Right, the portrait mode. But the delay accumulated if I'm not mistaken, from a few seconds to close to a minute I believe. Nevermind, my point was that the camera is fully functional as of now.