I never use the search button on the front of the phone. NEVER. It's always been a waste of a good button to me. So I changed it to start the Camera instead.
- Must be rooted
- Navigate to /system/usr/keylayout with Root Explorer (or another file manager that will let you mount as r/w)
- Mount R/W
- Open sec_touchkey.kl with Text Editor
- Change key 217 from SEARCH to CAMERA
- Back out and save (it will automatically rename your original file as sec_touchkey.kl.bak)
- Reboot
It actually took a couple reboots before it took. At first I thought it didn't work, but after a couple days and a couple reboots it started working. Odd, but there you go.