Motorola Droid camera autofocus fixed in secrecy? (Update: it's a date-related self-correction)
By Vlad Savov 
posted November 17th 2009 3:02PM
posted November 17th 2009 3:02PM
Update: Sure enough, we can confirm from testing one of our own Droids that the issue has been resolved. The endless quest for the green focus box is over, and you can now finally begin scanning all your discount cards into Key Ring.
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.
[Thanks, AlexL and Kaiser]
Makes you wonder why they didn't send even a notification. Very odd and will lead to (justified) paranoia. If AT&T or Sprint had done this on their devices, it would be front page news (and criticism). It's great that a bug was crushed but there is the principle of user assent. Of course, this is Verizon we're talking about so I guess we shouldn't be surprised.
We know phones have OTA kill switches so its not exactly new-found capability but updates should be documented and optional. This isn't a nanny state (yet).
What if there's really something sinister behind this?
Like they can now be able to use the "updated camera", to now tap into it without you even knowing.
Now that would be freaky, of course whose to say this isn't possible, with the Patriot Act 1&2 and such.
Your cell can be tapped into also when your not using it by it's speaker and if the battery's in.
Everything's a double edged sword my friend.
No one else nervous about the stealth updating feature? I see this as an issue, what's to say Verizon does not like an app on your phone, tomorrow crippled without your approvial...
Dear god, you're right. What if something else breaks tomorrow and they fix it right away as well! THE HUMANITY.
Relax, it's no big deal.
Fortunately, the "with Google" on the back of the phone pretty much prevents Verizon from putting any of their junk on the device.
**Checks my Droids Camera**
Sneaky sneaky Motorola!
Happened for me last night but I thought I just got lucky... lol
wooow it actually DOES work now. Im getting greens every time now. Go Moto!
WOW, but wouldn't our firmware number have changed?
could be just the camera driver - a single file or similar, which might not warrant a version bump.
I took a pic of my coffee cup in broad daylight 2 days ago. Red corners at least 4 or 5 times in a row. Now, in low light, can't even make the red corners. My theory is that the update just hard-coded the green corners. The Green Corners project team at Motorola gives a group air high-five in celebration while the Super Secret Update team sits in a dark room in the basement with tissues and lotion rifling through those pics you took of your girlfriend last night.
Makes me wonder what else they are doing without us knowing...
Please don't feed the conspiracy theorist. Next we'll be seeing people walking around with not only tinfoil hats but tinfoil cellphone cases, with the people they are talking to wondering why Motorola would go so far as to put a Droid voice filter on their phone.
Hmmm, thats actually a good marketing strategy for AT&T - Verizon is hacking your box so you have to wrap your phone in a Faraday cage, suddenly all of AT&T's coverage woes are gone.
Matt: Is it still considered a tin-foil-hat conspiracy when it really happened?
HAHA, NIIIIICE!
How long did copy/paste take again? :D
Of course, Apple notified people they were making modifications like copy/paste before giving you the option to download that upgrade, instead of, you know, just pushing stuff quietly to your phone without your knowlege. But hey, whatever works for you!
@Se7en: I saw Apple's commercial touting new and innovative features like copy & paste, too.
@ Se7en
"...Apple notified people they were making modifications like copy/paste..."
You're right, they had a whole press conference to announce the descent of copy/paste from the heavens!
Ok, I'm really happy about this update so don't get me wrong. But I find it somewhat worrysome that Motorola or VZW can just update my phone without my knowledge! I don't want these people snoooping around my phone for any reason whatsover!
They should change their policy and just force people to go download the updates from their phones.
It is possible it isn't a firmware update - the problem could very likely have been the code for the camera application itself.
I realize the autofocus problem happened in other engines, for example, bar-code readers, but perhaps the API is exposed to other apps through the single core camera application.So your core firmware may remain the same, while the camera engine updates, and that affects global camera applications.
I don't know if you can check versions on individual core apps in Android. \
There is no "About" feature in the camera app. I guess you would have to be a developer to be able to tell.
@Sam Just cause the other guy is being a dick, don't bring the iPhone into it. My iPhone works great, have fun with your Droid, or Pre or whatever you latched onto this week.
Just checked and mine is fixed too! sweet :) Definitely faster focusing and pictures are much better. I did not clean off the lense either! I’m liking this OTA update functionality :)
What you don't know want hurt....lol. Ninja's
My Droid locked up/reset yesterday morning (of the 16th). Not sure if that was the OTA push in NYC. Anywho, the camera focus is infinitely quicker, and all the barcode scanners work instantly/flawlessly.
Here's a crazy theory. What if there was no silent fix pushed out, but rather the autofocus code was broken because specific states of the clock was interfering with the operation of the autofocus code? So when a certain time/date passed, the issue no longer exists and the code became functional by itself. Sounds crazy I know, but not without precedent (something like this happened to first generation Zunes). Maybe someone can try setting the date to an earlier one and see if the autofocus magically breaks again.
Just changed the date back to 11/11 and got red boxes. Went back to 11/17 and got green boxes again. Could be something to it.
AlexL, is there an easy way to set the time or date or the Droid? I don't have one myself.
Yes, this is exactly what is happening.
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.
Same here tried the camera, works perfectly. Set date to 2 days camera stops working. Reset date back to today worked perfectly again.
I set my date back and the camera still focuses fine.
That is hilarious that the "fix" is because of this. Hahaha.
Why would the autofocus driver need the date/time passed into it?
I'm a programmer (for the iPhone), but nonetheless, I can't imagine ANY camera application would need the date/time in order to autofocus.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the Motorola Milestone just disappearing from the Expansys pre-order page over the weekend. They've pulled the page and stopped taking orders.
It's all nice and good when Verizon secretly performs OTA updates the fixes something for the consumer. Unfortunately...my experience, more often than not, has been that their 'secret' OTA updates break something I hacked. i.e. - unlocking my GPS on my xv6800 to work with 3rd party software. I wish these updates were announced prior to their installation.
Crowd sourcing at it's best. I always check the firmware version on my phones, ex BB user, and mine is the same as it was when I got my Droid. Not that it would matter since my camera was working fine anyway. It took about 2 seconds to launch the camera and about 1 second from the time I pressed the button until I was looking at my freshly taken, in focus, nicely saturated picture. I wonder if anyone else bothered to check there's before and after? Hmmm. Probably not. I would bet vital parts of my anatomy that there wasn't any "secret" update pushed to any Droid but rather someone floated the idea and now it's caught on like a virus.....
If you have had a working Droid camera from day one, you're in the minority. Until this morning, my camera couldn't take a decent picture to save its life. Now, I can't get it to take a crappy one.
I don't know what has happened, but I assure you that it's not my imagination that has caused this, and I'm not alone.
Go check howard forums. plenty of the users have before and after pics posted...
@izzy: isnt it a tad hypocritical of you to tell me not to knock the iPhone (which I didn't, I just used the stereotype of an iPhone user) but you're attacking some of the best phones on the market?
File this under "I'm freaked out, but totally worth it."
I took a photo last night and noticed the green bars. Didn't think anything of it though. Read this article and did a macro test, to confirm. Makes me wonder how and when it exactly happened.
@ Drzeller..
Why do that? The Droid has been out for 10 day's. That seems like a dumb move. You had 30 days. Not only is the camera fixed, but Android 2.1 is going to be released very soon.. My Droid camera is now snappier than my Olympus digital camera.
Silly me - I didn't expect an early update since we had a "published" release date. As a bonus, though - I got an email regarding my wife's phone being eligible for an early upgrade to a DRIOD today, so I could re-get it for less than I paid before!
D.
If you are not worried about Google scanning email, them why worry about the phone updates?..
Amazing... magical green corners. Also, seems like the camera is much snappier. I was one of the BB Storm first adopters who had to wait months for updates that improved little, so this is like early xmas for me. This is one of the main reasons I switched to Android. I knew Google (unlike BB) would want to get it right, with fast and meaningful software updates.
any word on a fix for the very off putting clicking noise the camera makes?
Holy crap, when did this happen? I was using my camera yesterday evening and was still having auto focus problems. Now I find this morning that it suddenly works better than my old standalone digital camera. Awesome! Thanks Motorola/Google/Whoever!
This is a fix that was needed. I am not freaked out at all. It is nothing more than Windows update type thing.
Windows update notifies you when it's updating. They just threw this thing at us with no warning or notification. That's not cool.
I browse constantly on mine. I download apps and documents like crazy. In 10 days I hit 300mb. How the bloody hell do you hit 5GB through normal non-tethering use?
And no, people on HoFo have reported using 5GB+ in a month with no ill consequences.
wow...iPhoneys are really that desperate? You'd think they'd be happily playing with their thousands of apps instead of bashing everyone else's choices.
Think different.
Anyone notice the time stamp on the jpg files? Did a quick test to check quality and noted the time was +1 hour. Both the phone and desktop say 11:00 am but the photos all show 12:00PM - never noticed this before, but was not really looking either.