Motorola DROID cameras silently patched?

By on Nov 17, 2009 at 7:55 AM
Software November 17, 2009

motorola-droid-camera

We and everyone else that has managed to get some hands on time with the Motorola DROID came to the same two conclusions — it’s a damn good smartphone, but its camera couldn’t focus for beans. Overnight, however, our tips line was literally flooded with reports that the DROID’s autofocus camera was finally doing its job and, well, automatically focusing. First reporters were humorously utterly convinced that their wiping off the anti-glare coating on the lens was responsible for the improvements, but as more and more people starting chiming in it became increasingly apparent that someone, somewhere was hard at work behind the scenes pushing out a silent update ahead of the oft-discussed OTA update due out on December 11th. Such a silent update is a bit of an odd move, but to be perfectly honest, it could go either way. We’re not convinced it improved our camera performance as we never had an issue focusing. Our issue was even though the boxes went green to signal a “lock” our pictures still came out blurry. But we’re curious; how many of our readers with a DROID have experienced a tremendous improvement in camera performance?

Thanks to everyone that sent this in!

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  • shane

    Mine is working now. Now if it will just stop force closing and rebooting that would be great

    • GJB

      If it’s rebooting on its own, exchange it. My current uptime is 4.5 days, and the only reason it isn’t around 10 days is because I ran out of battery when I forgot to charge it.

  • Dio

    “Camera Magic” kept force closing on me, so I uninstalled it. Wonder if this had to do with it since it was working fine the other day

  • emily

    When focused mine was never blurry. it was just a pain in the ass to ever get into focus.

  • Dave

    From Phandroid:
    There’s a rounding-error bug in the camera driver’s autofocus routine (which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly on a 24.5-day cycle. That is, it’ll work for 24.5 days, then have poor performance for 24.5 days, then work again.

    The 17th is the start of a new “works correctly” cycle, so the devices will be fine for a while. A permanent fix is in the works.

    From Engadget:

    Update 2: And things have turned surreal. Dan Morrill, from Google’s Android team, has confirmed that there’s a date-related bug in the Droid’s camera software that leads to it having cycles of good and bad focus that depend on the date. Our own testing confirmed this, as backdating to the 11th of November returned those red bars of failure. Apparently, the cycles last 24.5 days, meaning that you’ll have good focus all the way to December 11, when the real fix is expected to drop. So breathe easy, Gotham, there are no phantom updates, just an oddly date-sentient camera.

  • Nick

    Glad a fix is in the works but why is everyone shocked about VZW pushing stuff to the phone without a notice. VZW pushes stuff to the Blackberry Storm all the time without a notification.

  • JakeyBoy

    “Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.”

  • JakeyBoy

    “Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”

  • hm

    for as much crap as Verizon/Motorola gets, kudos to them for fixing that problem in a relatively quick fashion….
    Nice to have a decent phone camera now…

    • hm

      ok my bad I didn’t read the other comments. But good to know it will be fixed…

  • Josh

    Its not a silent update you tards its a timestamp error

    • Eric

      ….tards, lmao! Its not fixed yet. will be with a December 11 update. engadget has the scoop. its on a 24.5 day cycle, works for 24.5 days then stops working for 24.5 days.

  • JAG

    great, now i can replace my camera XD

  • Ronjr123

    Being a long time proponent of Motorola phones (going back to the Startac days), I am glad to hear it was just a software issue. I am also glad to hear that Google admitted too it so quick.

  • Noorul

    Can anyone post the pictures taken from droid before and after the date change to show the difference in the picture quality plz. I am one of those poor guys who don’t have droid yet :( Sob…Sob…

  • David

    Glad the auto-focus fix is on the way. I’m more concerned with the reported unacceptable cycle time when taking pictures (read the it takes quite a long time to take the picture…probably the focus issue…but it’s been reported that there is quite a delay before the camera is ready to take the next picture.

    • ChocoTaco

      This issue is also fixed with the current date. It’s been reported multiple times that not only are the pictures much clearer – and I’ve seen before and afters and the difference is huge – but the pictures are taken much faster as well.

  • a

    does this mean the random reboots issue is fixed?

    • Fabrizio

      This was going to be my next question. How wide spread is the phone reboot issue? I have had my phone reboot multiple times and I am beginning to have some concerns!

  • a

    550mhz arm cortex a8 cpu
    Android 2.0
    Google Nav
    16gb sd card
    3.7 inch 854×480 capacitive lcd touch screen
    physical qwerty keyboard
    5mp autoblur camera

  • JAG
  • Matt Thompson

    This is just plain, damned, weird.

  • Julio Zendejas

    Does anyone know how to activate the light when recording video…I usually record at night so I need the video light to be active…my Samsung Moment has an option to turn the light on and of for video…but I can’t seem to find that option in Droid… :(

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