how could samsung screw up the camera THIS badly.. - Galaxy S II General

besides unnecessary parental control put in place on the camera, like battery limitations, forcing your music to stop when its loaded, and inability to function when mediascanner is running, theyve also, and made a unmutable shutter sound and auto focus sound, and removed the option to adjust saturation, sharpness, and brightness.. and in the video camera, removed the the ability to pause the video, now you have to straight out stop it and take another one.
why did they do this you might ask? because they added extremely watered down picture editor, and video clip editor. and they somehow think that adding these after picture/video editors was such a good idea, that they should just remove them from the camera entirely.. wtf samsung?
now what i wanna know is what WE can do to fix this? is it possible to take these settings from the galaxy s1's camera app, and add them in to the s2's? the camera apps are extremely similar
EDIT: a solution?
i really think these things can be fixed, maybe not adding the saturation, sharpness, and brightness back, that seems like alot of hard work, and i guess it isnt TOO hard to edit the picture afterwards.. but i think removing the 'parental controls' put in place, is simply a matter of deleting that area of the app's code. i wonder if adding the ability to pause the video would be hard, it seems like a simple enough thing to do.. but i dont fully understand how one would go about doing this..
for SGS1 owners, do you guys remember Fr4gg0r? he created a hacked camera app that removed the battery limitation, music from stopping when camera loads, and even added the ability to use the hardware lockkey as a camera shutter button!, and he added a thumbnail of recently taken picture in the bottom right hard corner (which we now see built in to the sgs2). really amazing work! however i spoke with him, and he doesnt plan to get the sgs2, but i wonder if we looked at his changelog from the origional apk to the modded, if then we could just make the same mods to the s2..
can anyone a little more knowledgeable than me give me their thoughts?
SGS [APP] Hacked Camera.apk <- link to his thread for original hacked camera app

Modding the camera app is very difficult since it's closed source. Might be able to take the AOSP camera app and hook the driver up, but that's hard too... amount of work depends on how good the camera driver meshes with the AOSP camera app.. I think?
I've never tried to do anything with the camera so hopefully someone with more knowledge of it can pitch in!
As to your complaint about the settings... do you really sit there before taking a picture on a phone camera and fiddle with contrast/brightness settings? I wish I had your dedication to taking good pictures!

I'm guessing suspending other applications when the camera's running is to preserve resources. I don't think I've ever been listening to music when I've used my phone as a camera. I don't agree with taking away flexibility but I think the percentage of people impacted isn't going to be high.

I can understand your concern but I don't think these restrictions justify saying they screwed up the camera badly.. maybe if they used a crappy sensor, but judging from the photos and video's I've seen posted quality looks very acceptable!

the reason i expect u cant use camera whilst media scanner is running is due to the fact samsungs internal memory, where pics are stored by default, is mounted like an SD card... also ive only ever had media scanner running once re-mounting from mass storage or when turning phone on... although ive never actually tested this senario as my phone is always on and storage mounted...
neither of those issues are a problem for me though... at least ive never encountered them during usage...
Dickie

i know removing the battery limit requires deleting some lines of code, same goes for it killing music, and forcing a shutter sound and focus sound, but would it be incredibly hard work to add the ability to pause a video, as i find this really necessary when taking videos

soraxd said:
i know removing the battery limit requires deleting some lines of code, same goes for it killing music, and forcing a shutter sound and focus sound, but would it be incredibly hard work to add the ability to pause a video, as i find this really necessary when taking videos
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I fully agree about pausing a video recording. I've often used that feature on my SGS, and find it very puzzling, and annoying, that they would eliminate it. Quite odd.

i really think these things can be fixed, maybe not adding the saturation, sharpness, and brightness back, that seems like alot of hard work, and i guess it isnt TOO hard to edit the picture afterwards.. but i think removing the 'parental controls' put in place, is simply a matter of deleting that area of the app's code. i wonder if adding the ability to pause the video would be hard, it seems like a simple enough thing to do.. but i dont fully understand how one would go about doing this..
for SGS1 owners, do you guys remember Fr4gg0r? he created a hacked camera app that removed the battery limitation, music from stopping when camera loads, and even added the ability to use the hardware lockkey as a camera shutter button!, and he added a thumbnail of recently taken picture in the bottom right hard corner (which we now see built in to the sgs2). really amazing work! however i spoke with him, and he doesnt plan to get the sgs2, but i wonder if we looked at his changelog from the origional apk to the modded, if then we could just make the same mods to the s2..
can anyone a little more knowledgeable than me give me their thoughts?
SGS [APP] Hacked Camera.apk <- link to his thread for original hacked camera app

screw camera up??? except for the battery and music "issue" in my opinion this is one of the best cameras on a mobile, i tried many different modes and the pictures are quite good ))
unfortunately we cannot always have everything in just one gadged )))

well we may not be able to have everything, but i wont stop until i get some results.. ive been talking to a clever developer lately, whos on board to help me modify this app

I've started modding the camera app for battery level etc. Will take a look more today

These mods shouldn't be hard to implement and there is no closed source when it comes to android. We have apktool and smali / baksmali, we don't need source code from Samsung for this.

Related

Only 2 questions I couldn't find the answer to...

I came from an HD2, and what HTC wrote over in WinMo 6.5 I thought was great, especially the gallery app, which cleared up an image when you zoomed in. I've noticed that this phone does not do that. When I zoom in on a picture I took it just turns all fuzzy, like it's been compressed or something. I know the pics are high res cause they look great on my computer, but I just can't understand why they don't clear up when you zoom in. Anyone else experience this? The only other issue I've noticed is that every once in a while I'll open an app up, lets say the web browser, and it pops up and then just force closes. Several others I know with a Vibrant/Captivate are having this problem as well, and I was just curious if anyone knew the cause. I'm totally new to Android so please pardon me if these are dumb questions.
for the second half of your post you should get your phone replaced.
there have been a couple people on here that had that issue with "sticking" buttons so apps would randomly close or settings would popup.
As for your first issue, it sounds to me as though you are zooming into the thumbnail version of the picture. Perhaps the full high-res version is actually found in another pile/folder under the gallery. I don't think the thumbnails are generally viewable separately, though I do see a lot of other media gathered up from various apps which can be kinda annoying.
No I promise I'm not zooming on the thumbnails, I'm clicking the folder with all of my pictures in it, and it'll let me zoom in on them, but they never clear up. It's not the camera cause the resolution is right, just the zooming isn't working properly. it's weird, and frustrating.
I definitely don't have the camera problem. I tested it with photos I took as well as wallpapers in my gallery. I assume you are using the gallery app, right?
If you're getting FCs on stock apps you may want to just do a factory data reset (settings/privacy). It happens occasionally to all android phones and the only sure fix I've seen is a reset. Make sure you're not using task killers or home replacement apps (pandahome, openhome, etc) as they can cause a lot of FCs in my experience.
You might have your camera resolution on lowest settings. Try a higher setting and let us know. The default resolution is 640x480.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Checked the resolution of the camera and the pictures themselved and they're both 5MP, so I really don't know what the problem is now. It is rather frustrating though, when I zoom I want to see the details of the image not a fuzzy picture. Another thing I've just had happen to me is trying to copy over a 4.5GB MKV file at 720p I got the message "The file 'Up' is too large for the destination file system" I don't get that cause I have 6GB free on the phone and 6GB free on the 16GB micro SD. My phone hates me :'(
the 4.5gb MKV isn't a Samsung issue. It's a filesystem issue, relating to the default filesystem used on the sd card memory. FAT32 has a file size limit of 4gb.
It might seem a bit frustrating that you will have to re-encode that huge MKV, but considering that you can count on the fingers of one hand the smartphones that would even be able to smoothly play the video in that container in the first place, it's a small price to pay.
I know the phone could play it, it chews through my 720p copies of Top Gear without so much as a hiccup, and they're nearly the same bit-rate. I think you're right about counting the phones that could do that though because my HD2 didn't have a chance. I didn't know fat32 had a file size limit though, that's very useful information and thank you very much for that. Any ideas on the gallery app problem?
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
I had/have a HD2, and now a Vibrant that I am using.
I know what you are talking about with the pictures looking pixelated on the Vibrant when you zoom in, but look fine on the HD2. I too, would like a solution to this. Maybe another app does this.
I know exactly what you're talking about and it really is quite annoying. As if losing the flash wasn't bad enough, now even my old photos look bad on it. I've figured out firstly that the stock android gallery app has a 16 bit limit but that's not the issue I'd imagine. What I believe to be the culprit is that, as far as I can tell, what the image viewer does is it actually automatically downsizes all your photos which would explain the pictures' butchered quality. Of course it's just a theory but it seems to check out. Unfortunately I have yet to find a decent replacement app or a solution thus far. And not to dash your hopes but I hear the problem also exists in froyo. Kinda disheartening for such an awesome multimedia phone.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App with swype
+1.. I also know what you mean, I had the HD2 and zooming in on the pictures on this phone sucks!. I am sure there is an image viewer somewhere that would work well
Yes! Glad to hear I'm not the only one with this issue. I was beginning to think I was alone! I am by no means a developer, but I think it's probably the scaling algorithim, though it would be interesting to check it out on another phone running 2.1. Next time I activate a Captivate at work I'll check that as well, it'd be really weird if that one worked correctly!!
I've figured something out. When you look at photos in the actual camera app, and zoom in that viewer, the pictures look fine, it's only in the actual gallery app where the zoom doesn't work properly...
I definetly do not have the issue with zooming in on pictures (camera or gallery) and I have yet to have a FC on any app. You mentioned the browser, any other apps FC'ing on you?
Have you done anything (other than root if you have)?
Are you using a TK?
Can you give more details?
I know what you mean by zooming the pics. Try image viewer, its awesome and zooms in great
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Well it's only the browser that's done it, and it's only happened once to me, so I'm really not worried about that one. A power cycle took care of it right then and there. As for the zooming, like I said in the camera app itself it works fine, but in the gallery app it's not too good. I'm not rooted (yet), and I have no task killer because I've heard more bad things than good things about those. Idk how else to describe the problem, it just seems like when I zoom in it's like the file is a very low resolution and gets very pixelated and when I check the properties I know it's a 5MP picture, so idk what's going on.
Something I never noticed so I just tested and you're right!
It's the way the built in gallery app works. It creates a thumbnail of all images and that's what it displays. You can even see the thumbnail images if you explore the phone memory. The only way around it is to download and use a different image viewer.
I suggest large image viewer! It is a bit spartan in terms of features and ui but it has the best image viewing of all the apps I tried! Btw the default image viewer basically makes a lower res bitmap of all your pictures and it's impossible (I think) to actually view the original images from within the gallery app. Why it would do this? I have no clue, seems like poor programming to me. Perhaps it's the cost we pay for the nifty though relatively pointless 3d effects.
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant using the XDA app. You may thank Swype for any and all grammar errors.

[WANTED] Camcorder/Camera Advanced Controls

Hello. For some time now I have been getting frustrated with the standard camera/camcorder for my SGS.
I will point out some of the main things I dislike
Lack of features
It's hard to take pictures or start recording unless you look at the screen to see where the button is located to initiate it
Camera closes after idle for too long
Screen controls are too close together
Files do not save if you accidentally press the back button while recording
I have searched Google, forums and the market to try and find a replacement with no success
I would love to have camera/camcorder replacement that has the following
The biggest feature for me would be to have the ability to use either of the Home/Volume/Power buttons to use the camera/camcorder at least for Record, Pause, Stop and taking pictures
This would make it so much easier to use it without having to always look at the screen to make sure you are pressing the right area and will also eliminate accidentally pressing the wrong button
For example
Home key could be used for taking pictures and start recording video pressing it again will pause it and long holding it will stop the recording and auto save.
Volume will be for zoom and power button could possible take pictures and long holding for toggle night mode or something like that
I dunno about you but I find this configuration to feel natural
In the menu there should also be the option to exit camera/camcorder as some people use home key for this instead of backing out and the home button will already have a use
All settings can be controlled via touchscreen such as:
Option to toggle the camera/camcorder from closing on idle
Image/Shooting mode
All other general settings
If anyone else thinks this is a good idea or has any further input on making this better please post something
If there is a dev out there wanting a challenge please post Perhaps if enough people are interested in raising some funds there could be a bounty
P.S I wasn't sure if I should post this in Themes and Apps or here
Sould be possible i think, Power btn already done a thing : it lock screen without stop recording...
Also cyanogenmod as a great camera app, wait for it...
Surely there is something else out there other then the cyanogenmod one.
uppon2 said:
surely there is something else out there other then the cyanogenmod one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
- i hate the factory camera
I'm shocked that I'm the only one talking about this. Shame on everyone lol
Ill complain a bit too
I dislike the focus of the samsung app. Even in macro mode, you take an object from a 5cm distance and tap to focus..
it's going to focus well then lose focus. Even if take the picture when the focus is correct, it's going to output a blurred unfocused pic
The only "solution" is to take pictures with at least 10cm distance, or 15. But the camera seems to be able to picture much closer.. so it's annoying
Wow. People actually use the onboard camera? Camera 360 is what I've replaced my stock app with. But sadly stock samsung app is prob the best camera app from any dev/phone maker. What you need is a decent small camera like a canon ixus
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
bilboa1 said:
Ill complain a bit too
I dislike the focus of the samsung app. Even in macro mode, you take an object from a 5cm distance and tap to focus..
it's going to focus well then lose focus. Even if take the picture when the focus is correct, it's going to output a blurred unfocused pic
The only "solution" is to take pictures with at least 10cm distance, or 15. But the camera seems to be able to picture much closer.. so it's annoying
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem. While using auto focus etc depending on the distance/light it will hang there thinking about it
ickyboo said:
Wow. People actually use the onboard camera? Camera 360 is what I've replaced my stock app with. But sadly stock samsung app is prob the best camera app from any dev/phone maker. What you need is a decent small camera like a canon ixus
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have not heard of 360 *Checks it online* - To tell you the truth I don't mind the camera.... I guess I really just want to be able to use the home button to initiate take picture, start recording, pause and long hold for stop. Maybe there is a way to change something in the file hmmmmm surely a smart dev would know
I tried Vignette and Camera 360 Pro, well the 360 programs doesn't cut it, the interface is horrible and buggy.
Vignette is quite ok however - the focus works. It's missing the directional focus from the samsung app however, although I can live with it of course. Vignette also saves jpegs that are less compressed/higher quality.
To be honest i'd be just fine with Samsung's app if the focus worked fine in macro mode, and the jpegs were higher quality (maybe even make the pano mode high resolution )
Mostly because the controls/settings/etc are much better in the Samsung app.
Now since it's proprietary, not much we can do about these issues I guess xD (the button can prolly be hacked in tho)
bilboa1 said:
I tried Vignette and Camera 360 Pro, well the 360 programs doesn't cut it, the interface is horrible and buggy.
Vignette is quite ok however - the focus works. It's missing the directional focus from the samsung app however, although I can live with it of course. Vignette also saves jpegs that are less compressed/higher quality.
To be honest i'd be just fine with Samsung's app if the focus worked fine in macro mode, and the jpegs were higher quality (maybe even make the pano mode high resolution )
Mostly because the controls/settings/etc are much better in the Samsung app.
Now since it's proprietary, not much we can do about these issues I guess xD (the button can prolly be hacked in tho)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I need someone to find a way to hack the home button to work and serve my purpose
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=860609
Power button to take pics. Hopefully will soon be able to record/pause long hold to stop in camera mode soon if anyone else was interested.

[Q] Camera and SD Card

Sup, ppl?
Hey, I have a new X8 phone (3 weeks old) and I have a major issue with my camera from day 1!!! It's all glitchy and blurry, with wrong lighting and i can't take pictures at all. Sometimes when I repair the update with PC Companion or SEUS it gets to work again, but after using the phone for some time, it bugs again, especially after playing Angry Birds (even for just once!!!). I have never rooted my phone, it's all original.
I had it repaired by the service center, they said they just ran a software update (and I had the latest version) and I don't know how all my apps were still on the phone (I never manage to do this, everytime I repair the update I lose all my apps, how can I keep them?). I searched the web for several hours and haven't found anyone with my problem. I have posted question on SE support forums and on their Facebook page, but no one seems to help me. I think I'm having this unit replaced.
Another thing is that I formatted my SD card, and I thought I could get the original content again, but I was wrong. I had the "music" folder backed up, but I don't have the "media" folder. I lost some of the alarms (like the "multi alarm" one) and the notifications. Can someone upload the media folder for me please?
Thanks for all the help.
Felipe MacLeod said:
Sup, ppl?
I have a major issue with my camera from day 1!!! It's all glitchy and blurry, with wrong lighting and i can't take pictures at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What did u mean blurry? Maybe this phone does no come with an auto focus camera that why when you take picture will blur. Correct me if i'm wrong.
It's not exactly blurry, but it look horrible. For example if you edit a picture and you start messing with hue, saturation or color balance. The more you mess, the worse it gets. The display shows an bad colored looking picture and taking pictures does not work. Tried searching everywhere but can't find anyone with similar problem.
Can you post some photos? The best would be if you could put the phone fg on a table and take a photo without moving it at all. Cause to me it looks like either the camera itself is the issue or something wrong with software, if you're saying that when you mess with settings it gets even worse.
owiec said:
Can you post some photos? The best would be if you could put the phone fg on a table and take a photo without moving it at all. Cause to me it looks like either the camera itself is the issue or something wrong with software, if you're saying that when you mess with settings it gets even worse.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not that I can mess with the settings, the camera app doesn't have ANY settings to mess. The messing with settings exampled I used was about using a photo editor and try messing with the color levels or hue/saturation of any picture. My camera is displaying a screwed up image as if there was some color filter applied to it, someting that would react really poorly to lighting. Just like if you picked up a 16 million color picture with many gray colors (variant colors) and you converted it to like 256 colors, it would look really poor. That's the image my camera shows.
And did you try others apps for camera? Maybe there's something wrong with it. If not - go for warranty
owiec said:
And did you try others apps for camera? Maybe there's something wrong with it. If not - go for warranty
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It happens to any camera app.
I'm an IT guy and I know sometimes unexplainable things happen with hardware/software. Today when I woke up, when I was going to put the phone in the pocket for leaving home, it slipped and fell to the ground scattering parts all over (cover and battery). After rassembling it i thought: "Wtf? I'll try the camera!". And believe or not: it was working PERFECTLY. And is perfect to this very moment. Some problems just don't have a reasonable explanation.
Original SD Content
Now the only missing piece is the original SD content, which I happened to wipe out unadvertedly. I tried some undelete tools, but none found the data, and I probably already overwrote all the data with many backups that I made.
So, if anyone could be very kind to post me the media folder contents (with the alarms and everything) and also the pictures that came in the images folder I guess?
Thanks, ppl.
-snip-
shutup-----

S8 Gallery app - Story Mode

So, I have just upgraded myself from G3 to this Beast phone (love it)
Native Galaxy Gallery App there is a Story Mode/ selection that puts together all the pictures you have then in a given day or location and adds background music & some effects but, in doing so it cuts the pictures so you end up with half the face or picture to see.
Are there any settings the I need to change to make the pictures show in full or is there any fix for this.
I tried searching the forums but found nothing. In case I was wrong please direct me to the correct post
I'm finding that I have the same results and can't find any settings to change the way it seems to zoom in on each photo. Really nice idea but poor execution...
Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
No one else seems to have this issue or care for this feature
or they are too busy rooting/ unlocking the SD version of the phone
Can't say about others, but in my case: 1. easy enough to do it manually just the way I want it 2. it almost never works properly, besides cutting off the frame. Case in point, my phone created album called "at the beach", after we went to the beach. Well, most of the pictures in this album are not from anywhere near the beach and since I have location embedded in every picture and phone already correctly identified I was at the beach including particular field, not sure why it added pictures taken at home and many other locations. Bottom line: useless function personally I don't care about.

Stock camera modification

Question guys. Possibly brought up months ago, idr. Im on CPT right now.
Thats Coronavirus People Time
Not....not the other one.
Anyway back when, i remember adjusting some build.props in busybox to where stock camera utilised all 3 rear lenses simultaneously. It looked great. This was regular photo mode and whatever reason cleared up that red/dark tint plenty people had with ultra wide nightscape in particular. I got ahold of a more recent kali linux for personal reasons unrelated but it came with apktool. Curious if anyone has experience with this at all as im not the biggest gcam fan (it is what it is, chill) for a couple reasons but the biggest being long exposure. For example stock camera at 30 seconds will collect light and data before the shutter click whereas gcam does the shutter click first, followed by collection. So unless i got starcam mod (that worked) my night sky photos would be entirely too dark. No i dont want to excessively up the iso and wait forever for processing. A nice 30 seconds and 320 with farthest focus works awesome on stock followed by minimal lightroom adjustments. Point is i DO want to use either superwide or the combo that i mentioned earlier in pro mode. Inb4 search forums, i honestly dont have the time so if already mentioned in a way, a link would be appreciated. Any other advice with anything else like buildprops or what latest apk is that works with this device would be awesome. If anyone has modded a newer UI to work for this, id like to know as well if possible. Thanks frens
If you are unable to simply google what you are looking for, & you know what terms to use since you seem like a photographer:
Then you'll have to probably make this. I hate the stock camera apps and all the google play store stuff too.
I just wish we could have a Canon quality camera on a phone and PC webcam.
Is it really that hard ???
Good luck. I hope you get into programming and I get to use your camera app!
Im not, just been a while since messing with anything. Had bookmarks etc from hours and hours of searching where to find the files to edit (using the phone, rooted magisk) various strings and found some stuff thatd work some that wouldnt and crash the app but its like
All im saying is for example with gcam (and others)
You can have exposure time of 60 seconds where op stock is limited to 30. So its not a hardware thing rooted or not. Definitely software. Apkstudio is basically above but gui. I know some people find things easier unix/linux related (like android) to do from linux in the first place instead of cross platform. Some things are just easier. Wasnt really sure how active anyone is on this device anymore. An easier goal would really just be getting the newer UI, pre android 11 betas, to work but idk nothing about that either. And if i did this shutdown stuff past 6 months really got everything throwed off.

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