It looks like the Pixel 3 smartphone might finally deliver on Google Lens' promise. According to serial phone leaker Ishan Agarwal, Google's next flagship will boast a huge upgrade to its image recognition tool - including real-time results baked straight into the camera app! Here's what you need to know.

My dog, Alice, is an RSPCA special. She's a nearly 40kg mix of every medium-to-large working breed without any distinguishing traits. Alice is such a mongrel that she's registered as a 'mixed cross'.

Maybe Google Lens would be able to work out what breed she is. Its first guess was Dachshund/Corgi cross. That's not right. We took Google Lens to the local dog park for further testing.

It feels as though Google has held the market on “point your camera at it to learn more” technology for some time now, first through its Translate app, which let you target signs in foreign languages with your smartphone’s camera and receive translations on the fly, and now via Lens, which expands this technology to give you plenty of information about the objects in photos you’ve taken (or are about to take).

Starting today, owners of Google's Pixel and Pixel 2 Android smartphones, as well as some select Nexus and Android One devices, will be able to access Google Lens directly within Google's Camera app. Here's a quick look at how to do it.

Google Lens, once a Pixel-only feature, is now a part of the Google Photos app (or a standalone Android download). During Google I/O this year, Google announced a number of new features for Google Lens, and you can play with them on both iOS and Android right now - assuming your device now supports Lens in its Camera app (or the standalone Lens app, if it doesn't).

Lens is Google's experimental, camera-powered search engine, but up until today, the service was buried inside Google's Assistant and the Google Photos app. Lens still isn't getting its own standalone app, but now Google is merging the feature into the default camera apps on a handful of Android devices, including the Pixel. With new prominence, Google is updating Lens with a handful of features that should land on your phone sometime "over the next few weeks".

Google I/O is around the corner, and while the company has already teased us with some revamped services, we're expecting to see a lot more. Personally, I'm hoping to see improvements to Google Lens, the image recognition tool the company has put into a few of its apps. Because right now, my friend, it ain't great.

Last month, Google rolled out its innovative Google Lens app to most Android phones. Here's how to get the most out of its visual-recognition abilities.