Google Camera with HDR+ is one of the defining features of the Google Pixel smartphones. It uses computational photography techniques such as merging up to 10 underexposed exposures into a brighter image. HDR+ has been a mainstay of Google smartphones since the Nexus 5, but the Pixel's introduction of Zero Shutter Lag (ZSL) made it a lot more popular. Google does not officially allow Google Camera to be installed on third-party devices anymore, and the company does not share the proprietary code behind HDR+. However, in August 2017, Google Camera with working HDR+ was ported to many devices by independent developers.

Many Google Camera ports are now available for a broad variety of devices working on Qualcomm Snapdragon and Exynos SoCs. We made a Google Camera Port Hub so that users could easily download the most stable Google Camera port for their device.

The person who started this port craze is known as B-S-G, a Ukranian developer who only posts on 4PDA (a Russian forum). 4PDA recently used crowdfunding to send the developer a unit of the Xiaomi Mi 8, and the developer has now released his latest Google Camera 5.1.018 port that works on the Mi 8. As the Xiaomi Poco F1 is similar in hardware to the Mi 8, the same port works on the Poco F1, although several important features are missing.

The Google Camera 5.1.018 ports for the Xiaomi Mi 8 and the Poco F1 have been shared on the XDA forum thread linked in the source link. Users can install them to get potentially better image quality from their Mi 8 or Poco F1 camera. The following features are working on the Poco F1:

  • Portrait Mode (front and rear)
  • HDR+
  • Video recording

However, the following features are not working on the Poco F1:

  •  ZSL
  • Slow-Mo
  • Smart burst

It should be noted that many Xiaomi devices don't have the Camera2 API enabled which is required for Google Camera ports to work. Thankfully for Poco F1 users, all Xiaomi devices with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 or Snapdragon 710 have the Camera2 API enabled. This means that they don't need to unlock their bootloader and modify any files (which normally requires root).

XDA Contributor Kishan Vyas tried out the Google Camera port on his Poco F1 unit, and some quick image samples taken by him are shown off below. He observed that the port was lagging on his phone, as it would take 10-15 seconds to take a photo after tapping the shutter button. It worked fine for a few shots, but then the stability deteriorated. It should also be noted that users can't take photos with the HDR+ toggle switched off.

Download Google Camera port for the Xiaomi Mi 8 and the Poco F1