ASUS recently began a pilot leg of a development program with some of the most trusted developers in the XDA community. This is intended to kickstart the development of third-party mods, custom ROMs and GSIs, custom recovery TWRP, and custom kernels for the recently announced flagship – the ASUS ZenFone 6. Now, in only a few days, we're seeing some remarkable progress in the camera department with the first Google Camera mod cropping up.

ASUS ZenFone 6 XDA Forums

Thanks to the efforts of XDA Senior developer Arnova8G2, the Google Camera mod for the ASUS ZenFone 6 up and running. Not only that, the ZenFone 6 is the first smartphone to get Google camera's HDR+ support for full resolution i.e. 48MP. The feature should increase the clarity and amount of detail for these high-resolution shots. Additionally, the GCam features that are currently running on the smartphone include:

  • HDR+ Enhanced
  • RAW
  • Portrait mode
  • Video
  • Photobooth
  • Timelapse
  • Night Sight

This is an interesting development since the ZenFone 6 is among the handful of devices which sport a moving camera module. This dual camera module flips out of a cavity on the back and faces the front to act like a selfie camera. Besides flipping out 180º, the angle at which the camera opens out can also be adjusted. The Google camera mod by Arnova comes with a slider to facilitate this movement and control the inclination of the camera. This control can be brought up by tapping on a button in the navigation bar.

ASUS ZenFone 6 Google Camera Mod Forum

Besides Google Camera mod, ASUS' efforts of sending out ZenFone 6 units to developers should aid in the development of some of the popular custom ROMs including LineageOS, OmniROM, CarbonROM as well as TWRP custom recovery and custom kernels such as Proton kernel and Kirisakura kernel. These mods should set the stage for some exciting development for the smartphone in the future. Considering that the ZenFone 6 will be launching as ASUS 6z in India, where it will be competing with the OnePlus 7 and (hopefully) the POCO F1 successor, ASUS' developer friendly approach should help it attract a fair share of users who like to heavily customize their smartphones.