Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1 is one of the best budget smartphones that you can get under Rs 15,000 in India. But one thing that makes the Redmi Note 5 Pro better than the Zenfone Max Pro is the camera. Despite having good camera hardware, the stock camera app does a not so good image processing, which results in dull images that are not up to the mark as compared to images from the cameras of Note 5 Pro.
Recently, the company launched the 6GB RAM variant of the phone with upgraded cameras, and these new cameras are certainly better regarding the detail as compared to the cameras on 3GB and 4GB RAM variants. Still, a lot of work has to be done on the camera software to get the best out of those cameras. If you don’t want to wait for OTA updates to improve the camera quality, you can try the Google Camera on your Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1.
We already have an article on How to install GCam on Max Pro M1 by unlocking the bootloader and rooting the phone, but if you don’t want to unlock the bootloader and void the warranty, here is a method to enable the Camera2Api without unlocking bootloader and hence, without any need of rooting.
In case you don’t know, to make the Google Camera work properly, you need to have the Camera2Api enabled, and it is disabled in case of the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1. You might have seen that some phones from companies like Motorola can run Google Camera with HDR+ without any need to root or unlock the bootloader. This is because the Camera2Api is enabled in some phones by default. In fact, the Zenfone 5Z is son getting a new OTA update that will enable Camera2Api on that phone. We are expecting the same to happen with the Max Pro M1 soon.
HOW TO ENABLE CAMERA2API WITHOUT UNLOCKING BOOTLOADER & ROOT
REQUIREMENTS –
- PC or Laptop with ADB and Fastboot Drivers installed.
- USB Cable
- Zenfone Max Pro M1
- Assuming that you have the ADB and Fastboot drivers installed already, enable the USB Debugging Mode on your Zenfone Max Pro M1 by going into the Developer Options. If you don’t see Developer Options, then simply tap on the ‘Build Number’ 6-7 times, and it will be enabled.
- Once you have enabled USB Debugging, power off the device and press ‘Volume Up + Power Button’ together to get into the Fastboot Mode.
- Once you’re in the Fastboot Mode, simply connect the phone to PC or Laptop via USB Cable.
- On your PC or Laptop, press ‘Shift + Right Click’ in the ADB and Fastboot folder and then open the Command Prompt or the Powershell Window.
- When the window shows up, write the command given below –
fastboot oem enable_camera_hal3 true
- Press Enter and once done, restart the phone.
- Once the phone restarts, you need to check if the Camera2Api is enabled now or not. For that, you can try the ‘Manual Camera Compatibility’ application from the Play Store. If the camera2Api is enabled, this will show most of the options with Green Tick.
- Now, you can install the Google Camera Mod (GCam Mod) from the link given below. We recommend the GCam Mod by Arnova8G2.
If you did all the steps properly, then the Camera2Api will get enabled, and so, you will be able to use Google Camera with HDR+ and Portrait Mode on your Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1 without unlocked bootloader and root. If this method worked for you, then do let us know the difference that you noticed in the images from Stock Camera and the Google Camera.