Hands-on with the Pixel 7 Pro's Real Tone, which claims to render skin tones more accurately in photos, compared to the Galaxy S22 Ultra and iPhone 14 Pro Max
Google is trying to make its phone cameras more inclusive. We put it to the test against its rivals. Tweets: @mindofsamliao , @gpanger , @onlyjust30ya , @tressiemcphd , @hartoutwest , @gettingsome , @silkyd67 , @washingtonpost , @cpassariello , and @thelilynews Tweets: Shen-yi Liao / @mindofsamliao : “In other words, you're not alone when you tap the shutter button on your screen — you have a second-in-command in software form.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Galen Panger / @gpanger : The reporter didn't really seem to take a lot of photos for this comparison, which seems necessary to draw conclusions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @onlyjust30ya : Today, the phones in our pockets can produce images with the kind of fidelity that can rival — and sometimes beat! — dedicated cameras. But even now, Young told me, people of color still struggle to feel fully represented .. #Technology #SmartPhone #Race https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Tressie McMillan Cottom / @tressiemcphd : Putting Google Pixel's Real Tone to the test against other phone cameras - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Hart W. Van Denburg / @hartoutwest : Sadly, the same was/is true of film, for basically the same reason: white folk do the engineering. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @gettingsome : “People of color still struggle to feel fully represented in the photos and selfies they take—and that's partially because our clever phones don't always know how to handle Black and Brown faces.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @silkyd67 : Kodak's Shirley Card from 1954 was (is?) the standard. “..some key technologies — like camera sensors and processing algorithms — that help define the way a subject of color looks in a photo were mostly trained using images of people with light skin.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @washingtonpost : Google is trying to make its phone cameras more inclusive. We put it to the test against its greatest rivals. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Christina Passariello / @cpassariello : Our cameras use AI to take photos - technology that has long been known to not capture dark skin as accurately. Google says it has improved its camera AI to be more inclusive. How does it stack up with iPhone and Galaxy? By @chrisvelazco https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @thelilynews : Google is trying to make its phone cameras more inclusive. @washingtonpost put it to the test against its greatest rivals. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Camera tuning has quietly become the Pixel's identity argument. A year before this hands-on, a Wall Street Journal comparison found Google's Pixel 6 rendered people with darker skin tones more accurately than the iPhone 13 and Galaxy S21 — even though many testers still preferred Samsung's look. Real Tone on the Pixel 7 Pro is Google doubling down on exactly that finding, and the Washington Post tests it head-to-head against the Galaxy S22 Ultra and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The piece also frames the feature historically: the entities around the story — Kodak and the Shirley Card, the reference card that calibrated film stock for lighter skin — position Real Tone as a software-era correction to decades of biased defaults. That matters because the follow-on coverage shows Google keeping camera intelligence central: the Pixel 8 Pro added a 50MP main sensor plus AI photo editing tools, making image processing the durable differentiator across generations.
First-order effects
- Buyers comparing the three flagships now have a named, testable criterion — skin-tone rendering — rather than generic 'camera quality,' and Google enters the comparison holding the advantage established in the earlier Pixel 6 test.
Second-order effects
- Apple and Samsung face pressure to treat inclusive tuning as a spec to match rather than a nicety, since reviewers like the Post and the Journal have shown they will run side-by-side dark-skin comparisons and publish who wins.
Third-order effects
- If every flagship ships competent sensors, differentiation migrates fully into computational photography — and the brands that own the tuning layer, as Google does with Real Tone and its successors' AI editing, set the default look of smartphone imagery much as Kodak's calibration choices once did for film.
The trend: Flagship phone competition is shifting from hardware specs to computational-photography tuning, judged increasingly by how accurately cameras render all skin tones.