We've been using the Pixel 2 and it's bigger sibling the Pixel 2 XL for a while. Once again, Google's phones have some fantastic photo capabilities. What we were seeing from both the 12.2MP rear camera and 8MP front-facing is just so much better than any other phone we've ever used. And we've used a lot of them.

Read the Google Pixel 2 review

And that's before Google enables its secret weapon. Google has designed a custom imaging-focused SoC (system on chip) in the Pixel 2, and it's called Pixel Visual Core.

We don't have all the details; Google isn't ready to share them and maybe isn't even aware of just what this custom chip is capable of yet. What we do know is that the Pixel Visual Core is built around a Google-designed eight-core Image Processing Unit. This IPU can run three trillion operations each second while running from the tiny battery inside a mobile phone.

Interestingly, the Pixel Visual Core wasn't even enabled at launch on the Pixel 2 and 2 XL — we're just now seeing an "early version" of it with the Android 8.1 Developer Preview 2. With the Pixel Visual Core finally enabled, Google's HDR+ routines will be processed using this IPU, and it runs fives times faster while using less than one-tenth of the energy than it would if it ran through the standard image processor in the Snapdragon 835.

Google says this is possible because of how well the software and hardware have been matched with each other. The software on the Pixel 2 controls "many more" details of the hardware than you would find in a typical processor to software arrangement. By handing off control to software, the hardware can become a lot more simple and efficient.