Big problem with the camera

[ConoR187]

Ever since i got my droid phone ive been using the camera alot to take pictures and take video and have been turning it off with the camera app still up and what not (IDK if that is a no no or not). Well until yesterday everything was fine i could take pics normally, and now when i pull up the camera it usually sits at a black screen but sometimes i can get it to the normal screen where it shows everything and a preview of what i get a picture of, but even if i get to there i can hold my phone up on a bright sunny day and the preview area will still be black. I used to be able to touch the camera app and it sounded like the camera would focus itself before the preview area even showed up, but now when i click the app no sound happens.

Ive tried restarting the phone, taking out the battery, etc. idk what the issue is.

if there has been a thread before about this sorry lol, just trying to get this fixed.

 

[cableguynoe]

Not sure about your problem... but i would suggest trying a different camera app and see if you also have problems with those.

Try Pro Zoom or Camera 360.
There might be a bunch of other free camera apps out there, but those 2 are the ones I've tried

 

[ConoR187]

not sure if its the application or the actual camera, this message pops up when this happens.

Sorry!
Activity Camera (in application Camera) is not responding.
Force close / Wait / Report

 

[ConoR187]

yeah even when i try to run that camera 360 app

Sorry!
Application Camera 360 (in process vStudio.Android.Gphoto) is not responding.

 

[cableguynoe]

yeah even when i try to run that camera 360 app

Sorry!
Application Camera 360 (in process vStudio.Android.Gphoto) is not responding.

Sounds like your camera is screwed up. Take it in to verizon. They should be able to exchange it under warranty without any problems as soon as they see what it's doing.
Good news is they might be out of refurbished droids, so you might get a brand new one.

 

[ConoR187]

cool i guess even though i really like my droid, for a replacement how do you do that do they let you replace a phone in the relative price range of the original? or could i upgrade to the X?

 

[digdug1]

unfortunately droids arent being produced anymore. i read somewhere that they are exchanging them for the droid eris.

 

[cableguynoe]

cool i guess even though i really like my droid, for a replacement how do you do that do they let you replace a phone in the relative price range of the original? or could i upgrade to the X?

Warranty swap means they replace the phone with an exact model. Only chance of getting a different model is if they're out.

 

[cableguynoe]

unfortunately droids arent being produced anymore. i read somewhere that they are exchanging them for the droid eris.

That's asurion that's out of droids. Most verizon stores still have droids, so you should be ok for a warranty swap

 

[ConoR187]

ill go to my local verizon store and get a new one i guess, is this common in droids? ive only had mine for about 5 weeks then this happens lol

 

[ovenman]

No it's not common at all.

 

[artsfols]

I have a 20 day old Milestone (Canadian Droid from what I understand). Two days ago the micro SD card began to screw up. That seems to be corrected, but now I have the same problem with the camera described by CONORetc.

The good news is I'm now "somewhat of an expert" on restoring SDHC memory cards in the Milestone. I believe there's something wrong with Android/ Milestone memory card formatting program, but I digress.

 

[artsfols]

No it's not common at all.

How would you know that though?

I find in general that service/ customer personnel for ALL products are notoriously mum about product return rates, and especially adroit at making you think you're the only one with that problem.

Just curious how you'd come to that opinion.

 

[klwheat]

How would you know that though?

I find in general that service/ customer personnel for ALL products are notoriously mum about product return rates, and especially adroit at making you think you're the only one with that problem.

Just curious how you'd come to that opinion.

Well, he could be saying it based on the few complaints in here compared to the myriad of other issues...just a guess...lol

 

[artsfols]

Well, he could be saying it based on the few complaints in here compared to the myriad of other issues...just a guess...lol

Your point is well taken. How many issues here come down to "defective product" though as opposed to "correctible issue"? I've been a Blackberry user for many years, Palm before that. Both were good products although the Handspring (Palm O/S device) had serious issues. I dabbled with Windows CE, which was a horrible product. At this point I am wondering if the Android product is reliable enough for my purposes. Especially if, as you indicate, there are a myriad of issues.

 

[johnlgalt]

Although that may be so, you can bet your bottom dollar that if this sort of error eas occurring on any sort of frequency basis, all hte forums would be flooded with people clamoring about this issue.

Besides, it also falls to what your (and other peoples') definition of 'common' is.

I'd say that a common issue occurs in well over 30% of phones - and I guarantee that if this were the case we'd already know about it.

It's plain common sense - this is not a common issue at all.

 

[artsfols]

Although that may be so, you can bet your bottom dollar that if this sort of error eas occurring on any sort of frequency basis, all hte forums would be flooded with people clamoring about this issue.

Besides, it also falls to what your (and other peoples') definition of 'common' is.

I'd say that a common issue occurs in well over 30% of phones - and I guarantee that if this were the case we'd already know about it.

It's plain common sense - this is not a common issue at all.

A problem that renders the phone inoperable in 30% of phones?? Gee, Motorola won't be in business for long if their QA let something like that get out. I would guess that a particular problem occurring in 1% of phones - we're talking "camera inoperable" here - would be a very high defect rate.

I'm thinking that the problem could be as simple as the camera firmware expecting a certain folder to be present that is not there. Could it be something like that? I'm led in that direction because of the problems I had with my SDHC memory card.

It's interesting that the two of us have an identical problem, and Googling turns up more. That's why I think there's likely a remedy of some kind.

I sure would like to find this and avoid the aggravation of turning in the phone on Monday at the phone store.

 

[artsfols]

Today I received a new phone. Interesting discovery (in the old phone). This morning the SDHC card stopped working again. This made the camera work. Naturally, I couldn't store any pictures.
Conor187, I would suggest pulling the SDHC card to see if it restores camera function. That will give you a clue as to where the problem is. Sorry, I did not go beyond that.
My old phone had some kind of weird problem around the SDHC card. Another thing I noticed was that the SDHC card "seats" much more solidly in my new phone compared to the old.

On the bright side, the new phone SYNC'd beautifully to my GMAIL account. All my contacts, email and appointments were there in minutes. The effort to move all that stuff out of Outlook was painful, but well worth doing.

 

[muab]

Artsfols,
I too come from a Palm background. I ran 3 Treo 650's and a Treo 700W (blech) and an iPhone before coming to the Droid.
I have been using the Droid solidly for 8 months and have found that is extremely solid.
Now, having said that I had something hardware-wise blow up in my phone last week and just got a replacement. I can count on one hand how many times I have had the Droid crash (since I deleted an early App that caused crashes constantly) over 8 months.
This morning my new replacement Droid rebooted when I took a picture using the stock camera app etc... hopefully a very isolated incident.

With both the Droid and the iPhone people often ask me what I think of the phones and I have truthfully said many, many times (of both phones). "Somewhat better than my Treo 650..."
That phone was way ahead of its time in my opinion.

 

[artsfols]

Artsfols,
I too come from a Palm background. I ran 3 Treo 650's and a Treo 700W (blech) and an iPhone before coming to the Droid.
I have been using the Droid solidly for 8 months and have found that is extremely solid.
Now, having said that I had something hardware-wise blow up in my phone last week and just got a replacement. I can count on one hand how many times I have had the Droid crash (since I deleted an early App that caused crashes constantly) over 8 months.
This morning my new replacement Droid rebooted when I took a picture using the stock camera app etc... hopefully a very isolated incident.

With both the Droid and the iPhone people often ask me what I think of the phones and I have truthfully said many, many times (of both phones). "Somewhat better than my Treo 650..."
That phone was way ahead of its time in my opinion.

I actually never got as far as the Palm phones having converted to the BlackBerry. I went off the BlackBerry because I was tired of wearing out the track wheels (which they no longer have anyway). Anyway, the Palm Pilot, of which I had a few, was a very solid & useful product .. sounds like that extended to the phones. BBerry weakness was & is the apps.

Yeah, I do like the Android for lots of reasons. USUALLY when you have a problem on a platform like this it's some kind of weird interoperability problem. I suspect that my card got zapped or damaged and that the re-format program in the Android is lousy. (Based on Googling and finding complaints) That could slip through QC .. how often do you need to reformat anyway? The camera issue a downstream effect of a messed up card. But it's all guesswork and academic anyway as I now have a new phone.

 

[muab]

Artfols,
I was a pretty big fan of the Palm OS once I figured it out. Going to Windows Mobile felt like stepping back in time.
I presume you saw that HP acquired Palm and they are rumored to be using the Palm OS for a new series of devices...? (I think an iPad competitor running Palm may be in the cards)
I suppose that this could provide greater business stability/security than Android may offer in combination with some added features to compete with Apple...? Otherwise I question the wisdom of their plan.
Android OS is where I would put my money on the most significant future development, and I will be beyond shocked if I am wrong.

If you think the camera situation may be tied to the SD card is it possible that some of the camera issues occurring across the board are caused by low-grade (counterfeit) SD cards?

I recently obtained (to my dismay) a fake SanDisk 32 GB SD card that looked to be real but turned out to be counterfeit. I wonder what percentage of 16GB or 8GB cards in Android phones are crap counterfeit cards that work just well enough to get by then when something really taxes the I/O speed of the card it blows up....?

 

[artsfols]

Artfols,
I was a pretty big fan of the Palm OS once I figured it out. Going to Windows Mobile felt like stepping back in time.
I presume you saw that HP acquired Palm and they are rumored to be using the Palm OS for a new series of devices...? (I think an iPad competitor running Palm may be in the cards)
I suppose that this could provide greater business stability/security than Android may offer in combination with some added features to compete with Apple...? Otherwise I question the wisdom of their plan.
Android OS is where I would put my money on the most significant future development, and I will be beyond shocked if I am wrong.

If you think the camera situation may be tied to the SD card is it possible that some of the camera issues occurring across the board are caused by low-grade (counterfeit) SD cards?

I recently obtained (to my dismay) a fake SanDisk 32 GB SD card that looked to be real but turned out to be counterfeit. I wonder what percentage of 16GB or 8GB cards in Android phones are crap counterfeit cards that work just well enough to get by then when something really taxes the I/O speed of the card it blows up....?

When I first had the problem with the SD card I took the phone back to the Telus store, and they tried a brand new SD card ... it also wouldn't format! The clerk had a stack of 16GB SD cards to put in new phones, and they looked a little too generic to me. I don't really know much about this, but either both cards were bad, which your post now makes me think is a possibility OR the Android format program doesn't work properly, OR there was a problem with the SD card mount or phone circuitry.

At the time I assumed that this A-B test showed the problem wasn't the SD card, so I thought I'd take the card and format it on my PC using the Panasonic "official" SD format program. That appeared to make the card work again, but then the camera stopped working. A couple of days later, the card stopped working again anyway. That time I got a new phone.

 

[muab]

When I first had the problem with the SD card I took the phone back to the Telus store, and they tried a brand new SD card ... it also wouldn't format! The clerk had a stack of 16GB SD cards to put in new phones, and they looked a little too generic to me. I don't really know much about this, but either both cards were bad, which your post now makes me think is a possibility OR the Android format program doesn't work properly, OR there was a problem with the SD card mount or phone circuitry.

At the time I assumed that this A-B test showed the problem wasn't the SD card, so I thought I'd take the card and format it on my PC using the Panasonic "official" SD format program. That appeared to make the card work again, but then the camera stopped working. A couple of days later, the card stopped working again anyway. That time I got a new phone.

Well, I am glad you solved the problem. In researching SD card issues the last few weeks I have found that counterfeit/extremely poor quality SD cards are rampant.
I now will only buy an SD card of a brand I know and in the correct retail packaging. When I receive it I actually examine the packaging to be sure nothing looks fuzzy, misspelled or off color.

I suspect that the reject pile of SD cards in a number of factories in China are finding their way onto the market. In many cases this will equal slow performance, in other cases it will look good for a while and then die, in other cases corrupt files and crashes from almost immediately.
There are some SD card utilities available that can verify the card's function, so I may look into that and merely test every card I receive to be sure they are fully operational.

This never even entered my thinking until the last few weeks.