The idea first appeared in early 2013 with the iconic HTC One phone. A premium aluminum body, a brave, reimagined UltraPixel camera with larger pixels and yes, the earliest form of live photos. Only HTC called them Zoes, an extremely unfortunate name that did not speak anything to the average user. Even myself, a person who reviewed the phone barely remembered the name and I just found out Zoe was word named after the Greek word for “life”. Talk about an obscure reference.
Oh, and the implementation was far from great. To use this, you had to turn on a special camera mode, and every shutter press resulted in 20 Zoes in your gallery, a nightmare for storage and browsing. The whole thing felt original, but also very half-baked.
Next, it was Samsung’s turn to join the party. At the time, the company had a reputation for stuffing its phones with every feature imaginable, which often felt chaotic.
Among all those new features, tucked inside the Galaxy Note 3 camera, was Samsung’s early take on the idea, called Animated Photo.
To use it, you’d have to first find it among a ton of modes, then shoot a short clip and then manually pick which parts to animate or freeze. It was a mini editing project every single time.
Admittedly, Samsung’s idea was a bit different. You wouldn’t get just a live moment, you would pick specific areas of the image to animate, leaving the rest frozen. Think making your own GIFs in the camera.
But that was actually the problem. It was just too much work for a feature that should feel effortless.
Apple launches Live Photos
Then, the big change happened. In 2015, Apple launched “Live Photos” with the iPhone 6s and for the first time, all the pieces fell into place.
Enable this mode, and you get a 1.5s clip before and after the picture. It also all worked seamlessly in the Photos app, and it was also integrated in wallpapers and the lock screen. Plus, you activated it with haptic-touch, simple and brilliant.
Best of all, the feature was invisible and it just worked. It was not yet another mode you had to switch to before taking a picture. You simply took a normal photo.
It also got the little details right, such as the shutter sound happening right in the center of the clip. Live Photos added subtle motion rather than a jerky animation. And of course, it all comes with audio.
Live Photos also didn’t stop in the camera. It was fully baked in the iOS ecosystem. You could scrub through the motion in the Photos app, you could set it as a Live Wallpaper and even back up these live moments to iCloud and share them via AirDrop.
The big problem today
10 years after that, and Google still doesn’t get the concept right.
I am comparing the camera experience on all major flagship phones, and the Pixel stands out in a bad way. Motion photos look like some sort of psychedelic mess with all kinds of different distortions and a weirdly looping animation that can look downright creepy.
Comparing this to all the fun memories in Live Photos on iPhones, it’s a night and day difference.
And that’s surprising in a way because Google is famous for computational photography with features like HDR+, Night Sight, Photo Unblur.
Weird warping and stretching
The most glaring issue is the animation itself. Play a Motion Photo on any recent Pixel, and instead of a gentle little memory, you often get something that looks… uncanny.
Here are the common issues
Objects bend and surfaces warp in a weird way.The exposure jumps between frames, with a weird flicker.These aren’t just some small quirks, it just completely breaks the emotional purpose of the feature.
Google has spent years advancing computational photography, but it has failed in one of the simpler additions, adding some life to still pictures.
