What is GCamator?
GCamator is a popular camera application that ports the advanced computational photography capabilities of Google's Pixel smartphone cameras to a wide range of other Android devices. It builds on the open-source Google Camera port known as GCam, adding a simplified user interface and expanded device compatibility.
By installing GCamator, owners of Android phones from manufacturers like Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi and more can access exclusive Google Pixel camera features like HDR+, portrait mode, night sight, astrophotography mode, and more. These leverage machine learning and computational processing to produce photos that are often on par with or better than the actual Pixel phones.
Some key abilities enabled by GCamator include capturing much brighter low light photos with night sight, realistic depth-of-field portrait shots with artificial bokeh effects, impressive astrophotography using long exposure times, Top Shot for picking the best stills from a motion photo burst, and fused video stabilization. Photos often show more detail, better color accuracy, and less noise.
Compared to the official Google Camera app, GCamator streamlines the interface and expands support to many more phones. It eliminates Pixel-exclusive limitations, tweaking the camera drivers and algorithms to work properly on other camera hardware. The app is updated frequently by developers to add newly released Pixel camera features and improved compatibility.
For owners of high-end but camera-lacking Android devices, installing GCamator provides an inexpensive way to hugely boost photographic capabilities. It brings a best-in-class mobile camera experience to devices lacking their own top-tier computational photography features.