Ex-Google executive Vic Gundotra believes Android photography is lagging behind iPhone

It’s safe to say that the quality of the cameras in our smartphones has increased greatly over the years. One of the primary focal points of the Google Pixel is its camera, which has been touted as one of the best smartphone cameras, if not the best, on the market.

But former Google executive Vic Gundotra, who worked as the Senior Vice President of Social at Google and left the company three years ago, believes that Android doesn’t really stack up against Apple’s iPhone. He recently made the comment over on his Facebook page, and he outlines why he believes Google and Android are lagging behind Apple and the iPhone.

Gundotra says that it is Android’s open source nature that inherently means it lags behind the competition, saying that it has to be “neutral to all parties.” He goes on to add that Samsung phones have too many different options when it comes to taking a photo, highlighting the stock camera app from the manufacturer, and then pointing out Android camera app, or the inclusion of Google Photos on Samsung phones when the device already includes its own built-in photo gallery.

Gundotra goes on to say that while Samsung may innovate with a better camera, the company then has to “convince Google” to surface that improvement to other applications via APIs, saying it can “take YEARS” for that to come to fruition. Gundotra adds that the greatest innovations aren’t happening on the hardware level, but rather software, and says that Google was leading in this department years ago, “Google has fallen back.”

Finally, the former Google exec says that Apple doesn’t suffer from these same constraints and that if it wants to update its camera software, it can do so without having to wait any prolonged period of time. He points to Apple’s Portrait Mode on the iPhone 7 Plus as one example.

And then there’s this quote, which owners of Samsung’s Galaxy S8 or Google’s Pixel/Pixel XL might take exception to: