It was dark and my feet were freezing, despite my winter boots and Alaska-themed wool socks. Up on a hillside, the city lights of Anchorage far below, I saw a milky sheen striped across the sky. Were those the Northern Lights I had been looking for? 

I turned my Pixel 2 sideways and tapped open the camera app. The screen was a pixelated black. I swiped to Night Sight. The display didn’t look any better. I pressed the crescent moon on Night Sight’s camera button and held still, as I’d been told. 

The milky sheen transformed into a bright green. The outline of a snow-spotted mountain emerged. My phone had captured more light from the Aurora Borealis than I could see with my own eyes. 

It was yet another example of how damn good the Pixel’s camera tech is, especially in the dark. The iPhone X’s camera simply doesn’t compare when taking tricky shots at night. My sister, who traveled with me to Alaska in March, also tried to take pictures of the Northern Lights with her iPhone X that night — she got nothing.

It had long been a dream of mine to see the Aurora Borealis. I’d planned to try to see it both in Anchorage and further north in Fairbanks, where I’d have a better shot. 

I’d been checking the weather and an Aurora tracker online for days before the trip. We’re not gonna see it, I’d groan when cloud icons elbowed into the forecast. (I’d talked about it so much I thought I’d jinxed myself.) Then I’d check the Aurora tracker and my spirits would lift as the probability of spotting the fickle dancers ranged from “above average” to “excellent” over the coming days. I was on an emotional roller coaster. 

The lights peak in Alaska in March, but typically last from September through April. They’re usually green, but if you’re lucky you’ll catch some purple. They can be seen gliding in the night sky when particles from the sun hit the Earth’s atmosphere, kicking off a complicated reaction. 

The first spot we went to in Anchorage in hopes of a colorful show was no good; it was too close to the city lights. We eventually found a lookout spot up a hill around 1 a.m. There were other cars in the parking lot when we arrived — we were onto something. It was a short trail walk to a flat lookout point where clusters of people huddled together around fancy cameras on tripods. We could see what looked like a milky cloud to our right and another one that swayed above our heads — the movement was so slight it seemed like an optical illusion. I started taking pictures and was floored by the results. 

Meanwhile, my husband, who brought a Canon EOS 6D, took long-exposure shots, which are hands down way better than my Night Sight photos. In terms of clarity, you can’t compare the two — and that’s to be expected. He was shooting on a pricey camera. I was happy that my phone, which is an older model, could get any color at all. The photos were good enough for Instagram, and that’s all I needed.

Google offered Night Sight to its Pixel suite soon after releasing the Pixel 3 in October. Vegar Henriksen, who is 18 and works in IT in Norway, caught the Aurora using Night Sight on his Pixel 1 in December and shared his photos on Reddit. He was on a dark beach in Northern Norway — great conditions to spot Aurora, which hide from light pollution — and gazed at the glowing wave in the sky. 

“When I waited for the photos to process, I said to myself that there was no way that Night Sight would be able to capture this like I am seeing it with my naked eye, but I was very surprised when a clear and detailed photo came out and I instantly showed my friend,” Henriksen said over email. Some of his shots nearly brought him to tears.

SEE ALSO: Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL review: Android’s finest

Henriksen is an avid Aurora photographer and tests new phones as a hobby. He’s tried to take pictures of the lights with an iPhone X and a Huawei Mate 20 Pro, which has a feature called Night Mode. The iPhone “didn’t stand a chance at all,” he said, adding that it produced a black, grainy image that looked like his finger was in front of the lens. The Huawei fared better than the iPhone, but fell short of the Pixel. He tried several shots with the Huawei; the best he got was a faint green line. 

“The images were heavily over-processed, very soft and often missed focus,” he said of the Huawei photos.

When he shared his Pixel photos with his friends, one didn’t believe he captured the Aurora with a phone. 

Evan Lites, who moved to Palmer, Alaska, from Florida last summer, had a similar experience when he shared photos he took on a Pixel 1 on Reddit and Instagram. Afterward, several people asked the 18-year-old student what kind of phone he had. 

Lites was sitting on his porch in 10-degree weather in November when the Aurora showed up. It was the best show he had seen. There was one downside though: At one point his phone stopped working in the frigid cold.

“That night, the lights danced around for a few seconds, and I even saw a little bit of purple show up in the green,” Lites said. He had expected better clarity with Night Sight, but was still “thoroughly surprised” with the results. He did edit his photos slightly, including straightening and white balance temperature change. 

The three of us got our shots holding our phones in our hands, with little to no adjustment in the camera app. But if there was one thing we would all change it would be this: Use a tripod. 

Stopping at red lights can be super annoying when you’re trying to get  somewhere fast — but lucky for everyone, Audi may have come up with a solution. 

Audi released an update to its vehicle’s “smart” dashboard earlier this year that connects with city infrastructure and displays information about the traffic signals for the driver. Audi the feature the Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory (GLOSA), and it promises to make catching green lights easier with recommendations on driving speeds.

To test this feature, I headed to the two Bay Area locations where the GLOSA is up and running for connected Audi drivers: Palo Alto, Calif., and Walnut Creek, Calif. Audi is working with only certain cities right now to connect enabled vehicles through 4G LTE data to traffic management systems. In the immediate San Francisco city limits, I wasn’t able to get any driving advice. So I headed to the suburbs.

It’s important to note that prior to the GLOSA rollout, Audi released a vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) feature that let its cars “talk” to road infrastructure, like traffic signals. The German carmaker added this to its existing Traffic Light Information System, (TLIS), which shows Audi drivers how long they’ll be waiting at a red light. 

The latest update gives drivers more information about traffic lights, but now instead of sitting at a red light, the dashboard communicating with the traffic signal recommends a speed to drive to hit a green. The connected system knows when the light will turn green, so it can help you pace it out.

Throughout the U.S., the green light advisory feature is available so far in 13 cities at 4,700 intersections. As recently as last year, only 1,000 signals were communicating with cars. It scaled quickly, but it’s still not that widespread — take a look at the map below. And even if it’s at 4,700 intersections, it still feels like the feature is in testing. But it’s technically out of any testing phases, and available for Audi Connect Prime users on some 2017, 2018, and newer Audi models. 

Using the advisory system, drivers should be able to drive through a series of connected lights without stopping. But I didn’t find it that easy to pull off, especially in more urban, busy, downtown areas where the connected signals were mostly located in the two areas I drove through.

Each time I approached a smart, connected traffic signal in a 2019 Audi A8 the company loaned me to try out the GLOSA feature, a mini green traffic signal icon came up on my dashboard and heads-up display. The icon came up next to the speedometer and my current speed. In small numbers next to the green icon it suggested how fast I should go — never over the posted speed limit and nothing ridiculously slow.

Since there weren’t that many GLOSA-enabled intersections around, each time it came on felt like I’d found the prize in a scavenger hunt. Usually by the time I stopped celebrating that the car was in fact in contact with the traffic signal, I’d have to quickly assess if I could even go as fast or slow as it recommended. It was all very quick, and you’re moving and following traffic, so often you’re  approaching the intersection before you realize you’re not going the recommended green-light pace. It wasn’t distracting mostly because it was so fleeting and a subtle addition to the bevy of driver information in front of you.

For a stretch of four lights through a major thoroughfare in suburban Walnut Creek, CA, I managed to sail through the greens, which may or may not have had to do with the advice flashed onto my heads-up display projected on the windshield. 

Audi’s new feature was mostly a disappointment. I was ready to catch the “green wave” of back-to-back green lights the connected car technology promised, but it was more frustrating than smooth sailing. It’s also an unnecessary feature. 

What was easy was turning on the system. I toggled it on in the car’s driver assist settings, and magically the green light icon (and red light timer) came up on my dashboard and display at any “smart” intersections that cities allow companies like Audi to connect with.

Mostly the green advice didn’t do much for my drive. Since the recommended speed rarely came up, it wasn’t something I could depend on. And when it did pop up with its advice, I was already driving that speed or it was impossible to match because of other cars or the situation on the road. In the clip below, the small green streetlight icon is the GLOSA, projected on the windshield and below my speedometer. 

Other times I’d make the light, but I was going below the recommended speed, making me question if the GLOSA was at all effective. Here it said I should go 45 mph but I made it through the intersection around 36 mph. 

SEE ALSO: New Audi feature helps drivers catch more consecutive green lights

It really felt like a treasure hunt when the GLOSA icon would appear on the dash. Audi’s Balaji Yelchuru, a connectivity senior strategist, told me in a phone call, “not every signal has the ability to be connected,” especially because older systems date back 25 to 50 years. But as Audi is the first car company to connect a car to green light information, he said more cities are interested in making this data available. 

In Palo Alto, GLOSA lights were sparse and concentrated in the busy commercial center of the city. It was nearly impossible to make any of the green lights as I drove down crowded University Avenue. I had more success on a parallel street, but it was still spotty and inconsistent. It didn’t feel like something I could rely on — yet.

Audi’s Yelchuru told me it works best in semi-urban areas without much traffic. In Northern Virginia where he’s based he said he’s made it through 15 intersections in a row following the car’s connected speed advice. 

When it worked — sort of — for a quick moment in Palo Alto, it didn’t really improve the driving experience and was mostly just extraneous information as I tried to make through the downtown area on a rainy evening. I was mostly surprised when the recommended speed came on and only had a few seconds to adjust my driving pace.

Yelchuru hopes the GLOSA can keep expanding and “improve the overall system of travel” by keeping everyone moving and eventually navigating cars onto more efficient routes. He sees the GLOSA working best in autonomous vehicles to let the robo-driver know how fast it should set the vehicle speed.

As a human driver, while attempting to catch all the green lights, I hit a lot of reds. But that kicked in Audi’s red light counter, which I found helpful — way more useful than the green light advice. This was information I could use, especially when at lights for over a minute. One intersection in suburban Walnut Creek clocked me in for 124 seconds of waiting. It was also accurate, which was crucial.

It gave me permission to scroll through my music and use the hands-free voice control to read me my text messages. Even if I was stopped, it felt like a time saver, keeping me from scrambling to change the radio station or take a sip of water.

But all those red light countdowns appearing on my screen meant that the “green wave” never really happened. If only all the other cars would get out the way.