4 ms·

I installed third party roms such as Bugless beast, and Cyanogen, I over clocked the stock 550 mhz processor to 800mhz, but in doing so I took a chance that my

by kls 16y ago

I installed third party roms such as Bugless beast, and Cyanogen, I over clocked the stock 550 mhz processor to 800mhz, but in doing so I took a chance that my hardware would never work again, as a well as suddenly relying on these third party developers to keep me up to date, and secure. But close the camera app, and try to use it again later, and it was a 50/50 chance, at best, that the program would crash upon starting. Even if it did start and you took a pic, occasionally the photo wouldn’t save properly. The droid camera is just buggy and slow, and I believe it was on the hardware level, not the software level because these problems occurred in every camera application I used, including the default one. I think the first quote negates the certainty of the latter. I find it a hard stretch to blame the device when you have installed custom ROM's. Unless you have pulled dumps and logs off of the device and stepped through the code to find the issue and isolated it for certain, the first suspect should be your modification to the device, not the hardware and not Android as installed by the manufacturer.

sudont 16y ago
My buddy's non-rooted Nexus will lose connection to it's camera 1-2 times a month, requiring a reboot.
- markszcz 16y ago
  I have a Droid X and the camera, so far, works every time I have tried to use it. I havent restarted my phone for two weeks now and taking pictures yesterday at costco wasnt an issue and taking a picture of this post wasnt either. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/693878/hi_hacker_news.jpg http://dl.dropbox.com/u/693878/hi_hacker_news.jpg
  - sudont 16y ago
    Yes, my example was a bit anecdotal and the rest of my friends have no issues with their plethora of Android phones. However, the need to preventively maintain it was a pain to find out when we needed to use the camera in an emergency.
- theBobMcCormick 16y ago
  I've got two Nexus One's (mine and my wife's). Never had any problems with the camera. Both are running the stock OS, no custom ROM's or anything else fancy.
jokermatt999 16y ago
Stock Droid owner here. I love my Droid, and I'm admittedly biased against Apple, but I agree with his complaints about the camera. I've never done any OS modification at all (even rooting), and I've noticed the Camera app is the crashiest thing I've got on my phone. Even when it starts up, it takes about 10 seconds before I can actually take a picture, and the quality is...lacking, overall. I'm no photographer, so it doesn't get to me too badly, but I can understand his frustration even from just using it occasionally.
- kls 16y ago
  I am not saying that it is the case, I just think when you modify the device that much (especially overclocking) and you experience hardware and software issues you cant run out on the net and blame the device unless you have the proof to eliminate those things as the cause. I have a Galaxy Tab and the photos are better than my iPhone so it very well could be the droid hardware, it could be the version of Android but by adding that many variables via modification you can't just go out and blame the device without due diligence. There are a host of external variables that could be causing that problem.
- code_duck 16y ago
  I started having problems with the camera on my Droid 2 right away. The color balance is random and difficult to reset. Sometimes there is a 5 second delay before the shutter fires (it is confused by motion - like rain or snow even). The pictures are often fuzzy. The Sport setting is the only one I use, since these problems are worse in the other modes. It even crashes sometimes and takes down the entire phone (it reboots!). Sometimes the flash gets stuck on for 15 seconds first. Yes, the picture quality is often bad on the Droid 2 - sometimes it is perfectly good, though, which is even more frustrating. I can't rely on the camera at all. The camera on my iPod touch is actually better, though it has 1/4 the resolution. It's reliable, has good white balance, snaps right way, and the photos almost always look good. I'm definitely wary of Motorola products as a result of this and a few other issues with this phone. It has nothing to do with Android, though. I wish I bought a Samsung or HTC, not an iPhone.
- 27182818284 16y ago
  I've owned a few droids and have written basic apps for the phone. In my experience the camera app is really slow. Unusable at times even because it just takes too long to open and get the picture taken.
tzs 16y ago
I'd also worry about the over clocking being the cause of his problems. A chip designer explained to me once why over clocking is risky. I'm not a chip designer, and I'm reporting what he told me from memory, so I may be slightly off, but here goes: Sometimes it is completely safe. For instance, suppose a chip maker sells a chip in three speeds: 500 mhz, 750 mhz, and 1000 mhz. You have a 500 mhz chip. It might actually have been manufactured to be a 750 mhz, and passed all the tests at 750 mhz, but the manufacturer had a shortage of 500 mhz chips and an excess of 750 mhz chips, and so marked yours as 500 mhz and sold it as such. Congratulations! This is a chip that is safe to at least 750 mhz. Sometimes, however, your 500 mhz chip may be one that was meant to be 750 or 1000 mhz, but failed their tests at those speed. It was fine at 500 mhz, so they sold it as such. This is a chip that is risky to run at 750. How can you tell whether you have one of the safe chips or one of the unsafe chips? You might think you can simply try it. Over clock it, put it under the heaviest load you've got, and see if it appears fine. If it seems to work, you might assume it is one of the safe ones. The problem with this is that failure can be too subtle to notice. It might be that at 750, your chip loses the lower bit of integer multiply if one of the operands has a run of alternating bits longer than 18 bits, or something really obscure like that, something that your testing is not likely to hit. (Look how long it took the Pentium FDIV bug to be discovered). When the chip manufacturer is doing their test to see if the chip should be a 500, 750, or 1000, they know where the weak points are and how to stress them. They are also testing before the chip is put in its case, and so can access test points on the chip and see electrically that the signals are fine at the danger points.

by kls 16y ago

sudont 16y ago

My buddy's non-rooted Nexus will lose connection to it's camera 1-2 times a month, requiring a reboot.

markszcz 16y ago
I have a Droid X and the camera, so far, works every time I have tried to use it. I havent restarted my phone for two weeks now and taking pictures yesterday at costco wasnt an issue and taking a picture of this post wasnt either. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/693878/hi_hacker_news.jpg http://dl.dropbox.com/u/693878/hi_hacker_news.jpg
- sudont 16y ago
  Yes, my example was a bit anecdotal and the rest of my friends have no issues with their plethora of Android phones. However, the need to preventively maintain it was a pain to find out when we needed to use the camera in an emergency.
theBobMcCormick 16y ago
I've got two Nexus One's (mine and my wife's). Never had any problems with the camera. Both are running the stock OS, no custom ROM's or anything else fancy.

jokermatt999 16y ago

Stock Droid owner here. I love my Droid, and I'm admittedly biased against Apple, but I agree with his complaints about the camera. I've never done any OS modification at all (even rooting), and I've noticed the Camera app is the crashiest thing I've got on my phone. Even when it starts up, it takes about 10 seconds before I can actually take a picture, and the quality is...lacking, overall. I'm no photographer, so it doesn't get to me too badly, but I can understand his frustration even from just using it occasionally.

kls 16y ago
I am not saying that it is the case, I just think when you modify the device that much (especially overclocking) and you experience hardware and software issues you cant run out on the net and blame the device unless you have the proof to eliminate those things as the cause. I have a Galaxy Tab and the photos are better than my iPhone so it very well could be the droid hardware, it could be the version of Android but by adding that many variables via modification you can't just go out and blame the device without due diligence. There are a host of external variables that could be causing that problem.
code_duck 16y ago
I started having problems with the camera on my Droid 2 right away. The color balance is random and difficult to reset. Sometimes there is a 5 second delay before the shutter fires (it is confused by motion - like rain or snow even). The pictures are often fuzzy. The Sport setting is the only one I use, since these problems are worse in the other modes. It even crashes sometimes and takes down the entire phone (it reboots!). Sometimes the flash gets stuck on for 15 seconds first. Yes, the picture quality is often bad on the Droid 2 - sometimes it is perfectly good, though, which is even more frustrating. I can't rely on the camera at all. The camera on my iPod touch is actually better, though it has 1/4 the resolution. It's reliable, has good white balance, snaps right way, and the photos almost always look good. I'm definitely wary of Motorola products as a result of this and a few other issues with this phone. It has nothing to do with Android, though. I wish I bought a Samsung or HTC, not an iPhone.
27182818284 16y ago
I've owned a few droids and have written basic apps for the phone. In my experience the camera app is really slow. Unusable at times even because it just takes too long to open and get the picture taken.

tzs 16y ago

I'd also worry about the over clocking being the cause of his problems. A chip designer explained to me once why over clocking is risky. I'm not a chip designer, and I'm reporting what he told me from memory, so I may be slightly off, but here goes: Sometimes it is completely safe. For instance, suppose a chip maker sells a chip in three speeds: 500 mhz, 750 mhz, and 1000 mhz. You have a 500 mhz chip. It might actually have been manufactured to be a 750 mhz, and passed all the tests at 750 mhz, but the manufacturer had a shortage of 500 mhz chips and an excess of 750 mhz chips, and so marked yours as 500 mhz and sold it as such. Congratulations! This is a chip that is safe to at least 750 mhz. Sometimes, however, your 500 mhz chip may be one that was meant to be 750 or 1000 mhz, but failed their tests at those speed. It was fine at 500 mhz, so they sold it as such. This is a chip that is risky to run at 750. How can you tell whether you have one of the safe chips or one of the unsafe chips? You might think you can simply try it. Over clock it, put it under the heaviest load you've got, and see if it appears fine. If it seems to work, you might assume it is one of the safe ones. The problem with this is that failure can be too subtle to notice. It might be that at 750, your chip loses the lower bit of integer multiply if one of the operands has a run of alternating bits longer than 18 bits, or something really obscure like that, something that your testing is not likely to hit. (Look how long it took the Pentium FDIV bug to be discovered). When the chip manufacturer is doing their test to see if the chip should be a 500, 750, or 1000, they know where the weak points are and how to stress them. They are also testing before the chip is put in its case, and so can access test points on the chip and see electrically that the signals are fine at the danger points.