It's no secret that Google's post-processing camera algorithms are among the best in the business. That's why, for the past 3 years, Google Pixel devices have been consistently rated in the top tier of smartphone cameras in the industry. Google's HDR+, Portrait Mode, Night Sight, and other Google Camera features are just some of the most coveted camera features among our readers. Ports of the Google Camera app have drawn in hundreds of thousands of users to our forums, and to consolidate discussion and development of these ports we have now opened up a dedicated forum.
About a year ago, a Ukranian developer by the name of B-S-G managed to port the Google Camera app with HDR+ intact to other smartphones with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and newer SoCs with the Hexagon 680 ISP. This kicked off the craze of Google Camera ports which has only grown since the first port thanks to the incredible new features that Google keeps adding to the app. The ported app can make a night and day difference on some devices like the OnePlus 3/3T, Essential Phone, and many budget and mid-range Xiaomi devices.
There are now so many different device-specific ports across so many different XDA device forums that it's hard to find the latest port for your own device. We have set up a Google Camera Port Hub to help with that, but it doesn't help the developers who are posting their work on dozens of different forums. That's why we have opened up a new Google Camera Mods subforum inside the XDA Community Apps forum. This way, you can keep track of new and updated ports for various devices simply by visiting this forum. To keep the forums free from clutter, we have decided to only allow recognized Google Camera modders and/or their chosen representatives to create new threads. You can still comment on these threads, but you can't make a new forum post unless you're an approved submitter. So far, the users that have been whitelisted are fu24, idan1109, defcomg, miniuser123, arnova8g2, SKULSHADY, Urnyx05, bsg19071979, Charles_l, cstark27, and S4turno.