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.
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.
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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.