Google Pixel phones to get external mic recording support

Since its inception, the Google Pixel series of smartphones have been known to lead the pack when it comes to mobile photography. 2017’s Pixel 2 was still regarded as one of the best camera smartphones, even with Apple and Samsung rolling out new optical advancements for enhanced photography performance. However, despite the unparalleled computational photography performance, the Pixel phones have always been lacking one thing — the ability to record audio via external microphones using the stock camera app. Google has heard complaints about the issue and is now ready to fix it.

In one of the threads on their official product forum, an engineer from the Pixel Camera team has confirmed that they will be rolling out the support for plugging in external microphones to all Google Pixel smartphones. Users will now be able to plug in compatible external microphones to the ports on all the Pixel smartphones. The feature will be rolled out as an update on 18th October to the first generation Pixel, the Pixel 2 and the newly launched Pixel 3.

This comes across as a good news for those who keep the Pixel phones as their primary device to capture videos. Until now, users were only left with the option to record via the on-device microphones in the stock app, which offers several brilliant shooting conveniences. Previously, users had to install Open Camera on the device in order to record audio via the external port. With the new update, users will now be able to take advantage of Google's computational photography to record high quality videos while capturing professional quality audio at the same time.

(source)