Microsoft Pix, a smarter iOS Camera app by Microsoft for Apple devices

Microsoft just launched Microsoft Pix, a camera app for the  iPhone and other iOS devices. The company describes the app as a “smarter camera app” as it thinks that iPhone camera can take better photographs than what the default camera app in iOS does. The app uses most of the research done by Microsoft Research and bakes it all in a straightforward and intuitive app for 149MB.  The app uses a clever technique of taking a burst of photos while automatically analysing the best photo and showing that one photo to you while deleting all other shots. While using the new app we experienced minor stuttering, but that’ll hopefully be fixed in future releases. Pix captures and displays photos with better clarity, contrast and focus in comparison to stock images. One area where the app misses on, is colour accuracy. It tends to tone down the images to a cool temperature, resulting in a loss of image white balance. The issue can easily be fixed in upcoming updates. [caption id=“attachment_327230” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  The image captured by Microsoft Pix on the top is much clear and in focus while the photo by iPhone camera app at the bottom is smudgy with less contrast than the former.[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_327231” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Image captured by Microsoft Pix on the top has more crisp text though with a blue cast. The focus is better in the photo in comparison to the photo with stock iPhone camera at the bottom. The orientation is different because we deliberately induced hand shake in the photo.[/caption] Using Microsoft Pix is surely a worthy upgrade up from the stock camera app and the app also gives a compare view in the app about the changes done by the app to what was clicked. In provides some editing tools baked in the app but does not provide the extended functionality available in the stock iOS Camera app. But overall the app stands strong on what it does including special mention at providing superior camera shake reduction.