Earlier today, we talked about Essential’s AMA session on Reddit, during which the company revealed quite a few info, including the fact that the portrait mode is coming to Essential’s camera today… well, the update has just landed. Essential has announced via its official Twitter page that the update is now rolling out to the Essential PH-1’s camera via the Google Play Store, though do keep in mind that it may not be immediately available to everyone, but if it’s not, it will be really soon.
Having said that, it’s worth noting that the Essential PH-1’s image taking capabilities were probably one of the worst things about that handset, well, its camera in general, but Essential has been pushing out updates intensively ever since the device dropped, and the company had managed to fix it up to a certain degree. Well, this new update should push the camera to new heights, not only is the portrait mode now available inside of the Essential PH-1’s camera app, and in addition to that, Essential has also included reduced compression in this update, along with some other goodies. Now, in addition to announcing this update, Essential also shared an image of a dog via Twitter, and that image has been taken using the Essential PH-1’s portrait mode, just to give you an idea as to what to expect from this update. Now, the reduced compression should help improve image quality in general, and it seems like exposure compensation is also present in all camera modes, and that should help the Essential PH-1 to avoid overexposing photos. On top of all that, Essential has also included some stability fixes along with this update, as the camera had a tendency to crash in previous versions, we hope that the company fixed that problem in this version.
If the Google Play Store does not update applications automatically on your handset, you’ll need to open the app and check whether the update is available for your Essential PH-1, same as with every other app. That is pretty much it, we’re yet to test this new camera update, but Essential hopefully managed to improve image quality in general, and reduce camera app crashes to a minimum, or fix that part of the app completely, only time will tell.