Not all cameras are equal | June 9th, 2010
Recently, the way we were creating a camera and using it broke. I’m not sure why it broke, but I decided to say screw it and to use the Camera Intent in Android, because that’s what you’re supposed to do on Android anyway. This is what most Twitter Applications use, and since Twitter Apps are probably the most used application on Android, I figure if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me…
Oh how wrong I was!!!
I added the new intent code, and I tested it on four phones. I tested it on the HTC EVO 4G that I received from Google IO, the Nexus One, the Motorola Milestone with the official Telus Firmware (with camera), the HTC Dream with stock Android 1.6 and the Rogers HTC Magic with Android 1.5 and the 9/11 update. Basically, everything worked but the Rogers HTC Magic. The thing is that once you use intents, you are relying on the OEMs to write a good enough Android Camera Application for you to get a picture from. This may be good for a Google blessed image, or a stable HTC phone like the EVO, but it’s clear that on certain phones from certain providers, that there may be some issues.
I’m certain that there’s phones in the wild that have broken cameras, and it’d be good to find out which phones have broken cameras. If people could test on these phones (with Canadian carriers next to them), that would be greatly appreciated:
- HTC Hero (Telus)
- LG EVE (Rogers)
- Motorola DEXT (Bell)
- Motorola Quench (Rogers)
- Motorola Backflip (Telus)
- Samsung Galaxy (Bell/Rogers)
- Acer Liquid E (Rogers)
- Xperia X10 (Rogers)
Those are the phones that I know are in the wild in Canada. I’m sure there’s more than this in other countries, namely in the United States, but this is a good cross-section of devices from a handful of manufacturers who may have their own customized camera applications. I’ve exempted test devices from this post, because I don’t think it’s fair to take a broken firmware and say “Hey, the Camera Doesn’t work!”. However, the HTC Magic should work, and it’s disappointing that it doesn’t, since this breaks not only PhoneGap’s camera capability, but anything that uses that intent. Hopefully in the future, Android cameras will be more reliable.
July 25th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Does anyone know which type of video files are supported? I remember the Intuition only could dl 3gp utilizing opera mini. I downloaded the twist ap, maybe that is the issue? How can I watch movies from sites apart from youtube? Which file varieties? Usually I am given the choice of 3gp or mpeg4. Cannot get both to work. Thanks on your time! Damn I want I was eligible for the improve to EVO!
April 12th, 2011 at 8:15 am
i’ve tried making the camera work and it does nothing, the official documentation example doesn’t work and lots of people complain in the forum and say it’s a bug,
it’s not a broken firmware since neither the phone nor the emulator works
April 18th, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Which version? I know that there’s been some work done on the new Capture API, so I believe that the work on the new API might have caused it. I believe there’s a bug already in the tracker for this and it’s being looked at by one of the other Android Devs, but if you want to provide a LogCat dump (adb logcat), source code or other details to flesh out the bug, that would help us find it faster.