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Two impressive elements stood out. First, was the sharp focus on the foreground subject, and second, was its performance in lower light. The background bokeh blur was easy to appreciate, though I did catch on to a couple of caveats.

Symmetry can be a factor in how the blur appears. A skyline or vista in the background is fine because it’s an infinite focus. Shoot a subject in front of a wall at an angle and the closer side may not show much of a blur at all, even though it’s several feet away. As there’s no way to adjust the blur afterward, like you could with Live Focus on the Galaxy Note 8, the result is what it is.

The cropping effect also limits how much of a background you can squeeze in, though I found I could get around that a little more by switching to 16:9 aspect ratio.

Google’s software does a really admirable job of separating the foreground from the background in more complex shooting scenarios, but loose hairs and other artifacts can pose a challenge.

Neither of these really detract from what is otherwise a superb feature, and the good news is that the phone saves a non-bokeh version of the image too. The Pixel 2 lacks the studio lighting effects of the iPhone 8/8 Plus and iPhone X, but it’s no less capable of producing excellent portraits under the right circumstances. With the right lighting and some adjustments on exposure, white balance and HDR, it can deliver stirring images.

Not that the mode should be limited to people or pets. I’ve used similar modes on other phones for food and other subjects to dramatic effect.

Taking selfies

I’m not one for selfies, but for those who are, Portrait mode extends to the front-facing camera as well. It’s an 8-megapixel sensor, and it lacks the focusing abilities of the rear lens, yet results are still great.

Being tall with a longer reach, I also tried doing it with the rear lens and pressing the volume button, which doubles as a hard shutter. It would’ve been nice if Google allowed the Pixel 2’s squeeze to act as a hard shutter, but I can also understand why that wouldn’t work well. As good as the OIS is, less hand movement is better than more.

Video

The previous Pixel phones were great at shooting steady footage, thanks to digital stabilization. Adding in OIS helps the cause further, lending a helping hand (pardon the pun) to capturing smoother clips. The settings has a “video stabilizer” mode toggled on by default, which helps to smooth things even further.

Beyond that, there are no surprises. You can shoot in 4K at 30fps, but not 60fps. Slow-motion video is either 120fps or 240fps. There is no manual video mode, like the LG V30, nor any other specialized mode for shooting footage.