The OnePlus 12's first update adds Ultra HDR support in Google Photos

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February 2, 2024
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Repost of an article from Android Police

The OnePlus 12 joins Google and Samsung’s latest flagships in supporting Android 14’s new image format

The OnePlus 12's first update adds Ultra HDR support in Google Photos cipads freeads

SUMMARY

Android 14 introduces the new Ultra HDR image format, which is compatible with JPEG and can be displayed properly on both standard and high dynamic range displays.
The Google Pixel 8 was the first phone to support capturing Ultra HDR photos, followed by Samsung’s Galaxy S24, and now, the OnePlus 12.
Devices need to support SDR dimming to properly display HDR images alongside SDR UI elements, a feature present in Pixel 7 and later, Galaxy S24, and OnePlus 12.
One of the highlight features of Android 14 is Google’s new Ultra HDR image format. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a new image format that’s based on the ubiquitous JPEG format, meaning it’s supported by nearly every platform out there. Ultra HDR builds upon JPEG by adding an HDR gainmap to its metadata, which allows the same image to be displayed properly on both standard and high dynamic range displays.

A new file format of any kind is pointless if nothing supports it, which is why it’s important that Ultra HDR is backwards compatible with JPEG. However, you still need devices that are capable of capturing photos in Ultra HDR, of which there aren’t very many right now. The Google Pixel 8 was the first phone to support capturing Ultra HDR photos, but it was quickly joined by Google’s older phones once they received an update to the Google Camera app.

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It’s never surprising when a Pixel phone adopts a new Android feature, especially when it’s something Google developed itself. Therefore, the true barometer for Ultra HDR’s hopes as an image standard was whether other Android OEMs would adopt it. Fortunately, Android’s biggest OEM, Samsung, added support for Ultra HDR photos with the Galaxy S24. And now, OnePlus has joined the fray by introducing this feature in its latest update to the OnePlus 12.

OnePlus started rolling out a 6.74GB update to the OnePlus 12 earlier today, updating the phone’s software to OxygenOS 14.0.0.404. The very first item in the changelog says that “ProXDR is now available for Google’s Photos app,” which piqued our interest, because while Samsung also markets its end-to-end HDR solution as something else (“Super HDR”), the Galaxy S24 just outputs photos in Google’s Ultra HDR format. I asked tech reviewer Martin Guay to test this out, and he shared with me that the OnePlus 12 now captures photos in Ultra HDR, as confirmed by the Google Photos app.

While Ultra HDR capture support is nice, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Devices also need to support a feature called SDR dimming to actually make it worthwhile. That’s because without SDR dimming, HDR images wouldn’t display properly when shown alongside SDR UI elements. SDR dimming is a feature that dims SDR UI layers without compromising HDR content, and it’s a feature that’s present on the Pixel 7 and later, as well as on the Galaxy S24 series. And I can confirm it’s also present on the OnePlus 12, as I had Martin install an app I made that tests whether the feature is enabled.

Left: Confirming SDR dimming support on the OnePlus 12. Right: Confirming Ultra HDR capture support on the OnePlus 12.

Hopefully, more OEMs join Samsung and OnePlus in supporting Ultra HDR, as greater adoption by OEMs will increase the demand for social media platforms and other apps to add support for it.