They fixed the Camera!

[kenyu73]

I did a Google News search using "Verizon Droid Patch Update" and got some interesting reads!!!

{edited for proprietary information}

[GreySeal]

Whatever the news reports, or what Motorola or Verizon has to say, there is a pronounced difference between yesterday and today with my Droid's Camera.

Not only does the autofocus now work absolutely reliably, but the low light pictures are improved 1000%.  It is like a night and day difference.  (no pun intended)

Mine previously was totally unreliable outdoors and impossible indoors, flash or not.  Outdoors, if I refocused 5-10 times until I got the green corners, the picture was pretty good.  Now, even indoors it focuses almost immediately and green corners first time everytime.  Also, the horrible noise (grain for you film buffs) is gone.  Even indoor shots are great.  It won't replace my Canon 40D anytime soon, but for a phone camera, I couldn't ask for more.

If the powers that be take care of the other issues (voice dial for one) as well as this one,  this could be the last phone I ever buy.

[snorkel]

camera is not fixed.

Set your phones clock back two days and it stops working again.

From what I read it's related to a programmng bug where they used a timestamp in

the autofocus routine and that is what is causing the problem.

Don't know if they attempted to use the timestamp as  a number or a GUID.

Regardless, it should work up until a real fix is done.

[colfrmb]

It just "got better" after a particular datetime was passed?

I'm hoping that the programmers who wrote the camera code didn't do the same thing other places... 

[bishless]

This just sounds hokey. No real update news?

My camera is performing just as poorly as yesterday... It's not horrible, just not great. I'll hold my breath until December 11.

[willanaya]

two days ago i took a sample pic of a book shelf and i got the red lines.  just took the same pic just now, green lines.  same distance, same lighting. wow

[SSHGuru]

Before yesterday I mostly got red.  Now it's green every time and the pictures are stunning if I'm not moving my hand - lol.

Still my question remains.

You can shoot a pic by tapping the screen button or there are the camera side toggles on the lower right side of the phone - what are those for?  I found that tapping the screen button does a real good job.

[n0yxl]

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snorkel wrote:

camera is not fixed.

Set your phones clock back two days and it stops working again.

From what I read it's related to a programmng bug where they used a timestamp in

the autofocus routine and that is what is causing the problem.

Don't know if they attempted to use the timestamp as  a number or a GUID.

Regardless, it should work up until a real fix is done.

---

LOL, it's true!   This is hilarious, I needed a good laugh today -thank you Motorola!

The camera was seriously embarrasing to use before; glad to know that a software update should fix it.

[willanaya]

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SSHGuru wrote:

Before yesterday I mostly got red.  Now it's green every time and the pictures are stunning if I'm not moving my hand - lol.

Still my question remains.

You can shoot a pic by tapping the screen button or there are the camera side toggles on the lower right side of the phone - what are those for?  I found that tapping the screen button does a real good job.

---

okay, i am looking at the camera screen.

left hand side contains the tab which houses the camera options like auto focus, flash, screen mode, color effect, etc....

right hand side contains a small thumbnail of your last picture, below that a slider with an icon of a video camera on top and an icon of a camera on the bottom.  in between those two icons is a "switich". if the switch is near the "camera" icon, it means you are using the camera.  if it is near the "video camera" on top, it means you are using the video camera. (please bear with me)

below that is a circle.  this is used to take a picture in case you dont want to use the button on the outside of the phone.

if you tap on the screen, you see a plus and minus sign. these are used to zoom in and out.

which toggle switch are you referring too/about?

[solar3]

Weird, I'm getting pretty constant green borders as well now. I didn't believe anything had been done reading this post because I hadn't heard anything from the tech sites I browse. The auto focus does seem to work better, though. the quality if the pic is still so-so. II don't know what my firmware version was when I got it, or the kernal or build number for that matter....

JT