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Root Camera Swap

Ph0enix_216

Android Enthusiast
Mar 5, 2015
293
298
/system/xbin/su
Evening all (at least, it's evening in the United States :p ). I hope somebody finds this information relevant.

I own two LG Volts, both of them Virgin Mobile variants. One of them, my daily driver, has always been plagued by the annoying green night-visionish tint that plagues some of our Volts. The other Volt I own, which I use for development purposes and as a GPS for my car, never was plagued by the green tint.

So tonight, while on quite the sugar rush, I got the bright idea in my head to just simply pop open the two phones and swap the two cameras. After removing the 11 screws and the SIM and SD cards for each phone and prying off the grey plastic piece with a guitar pick, removing the camera is simply a matter of disconnecting a flex cable. During the swap though, I noticed something:

Camera_Front.jpg
Camera_Back.jpg

These are the two cameras, front and back images. The top camera is plagued with the green tint, while the bottom camera sees everything just fine. Obviously, they're two very different pieces of hardware.

For those of you brave enough to expose your phone's innards to the outside world, would you please do a couple things?
--Tell us your experience (or lack of) with the green tinted camera
--List the information printed on the flex cables of your cameras

I'm just curious to see what cameras are affected and which ones aren't.

Anyway's that's just my two cents for the evening. Thanks for reading! :)


EDIT: For those of you brave/curious/crazy enough to actually go about playing around with your phone's hardware, it actually isn't that hard to get to the camera remove it and read it's information. All your really need is:
  • A small Phillips-head screwdriver (I used a PH00)
  • Some type of plastic wedge (a guitar pick works great)
  • A soft surface, such as a towel to lay your phone onto so that the screen doesn't get damaged.
  • Patience

Step 1:
Power off your phone. The battery's coming out anyway, so you might as well shut it down properly.
Snapchat-2321048403333162068.jpg



Step 2: Flip over your phone and remove the back cover. Remove the battery, SD card (if you have one) and if possible, the SIM card. Set them aside, and using your screwdriver, remove the 11 Phillips head screws. Make sure you put them somewhere where they won't roll away and disappear forever (I just set them inside the Volt's back cover and called it good).
Snapchat-1799992344138582502.jpg



Step 3: Okay, this is where things might start to get a little bit intimidating. Take that plastic wedge that I told you to grab (again, I used a guitar pick and it worked wonders), and try to force it into a corner of the Volt, between the front plastic piece and the grey-ish metal-y looking bezel.
Snapchat-4393893535802690166.jpg


Step 4: Once you've got your wedge in there, gently work your way around the whole perimeter of the phone to release all the plastic clips holding the Volt together. Then remove the bezel and set it aside. You should now see something like this:
Snapchat-3841185870666642548.jpg



Step 5: See the black and gold connector directly to the left of the camera? Insert your plastic pry tool directly underneath that and gently pry upwards. The camera should then come out (one of mine was magnetic and didn't want to come out as easily).
Snapchat-7566331376072721057.jpg



See, that wasn't so hard, was it? And putting the phone back together is the same process, just backwards. If you were brave enough to try this, then post here and let us know, and tell us what the flex cable on your camera says, and tell us about your experience (or lack of) with the green-ish tint.
 
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If I had a backup phone I'd help out. Excellent idea though.

I notice that on the top photo, the contact side (flex cable to board) varies quite a bit. Seems that might be an issue in of itself.
Did you swap the cameras? And if so, was it the desired outcome? (meaning green tint switched from one to the other).

Post your part numbers for both, see if others can confirm the "correct" camera. Then we can source out for that part from one of the major electronic part suppliers.
 
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Alright, so the top camera, which is infected with the green tint, says "Y495B", and says "LGIT" and "1414" underneath. On the flip side of the flex cable, it says "E4QMP".

The working camera says "Y412G" on the front, and "E8BMN" on the other side of the flex cable.

And for those of your who were wondering, yes, swapping the cameras does produce the desired results. My daily driver phone now has a working camera, meaning I don't have to carry around my Moto E with me wherever I go if I want to use Snapchat :p

I managed to get pictures while dismantling the phones, so if anyone wants me to explain in detail, I can add a walk-through to the OP that shows how to take apart the phone. It's not that hard, and takes about 5-10 minutes. You just need a small Phillips head screwdriver and some form of plastic wedge, like a pry tool or a guitar pick.
 
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So its mainly hardware issues causing the green tint? My Volt luckily is green free with CM11 but its weird how LG is using different camera models for this phone :/
Not really...they likely found a good deal from a different manufacturer or negotiated a more profitable contract. Essentially there's no difference from the users perspective until they go and start mucking about with root. ;p
 
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You should black out your meid just to be on the safe side cloning is very easy with the proper tools
Thanks for the tip bro :) I'm not worried though, because that's not my activated phone in the photos, just an unactivated device I used for development purposes.
 
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@Ph0enix_216 pictures I got. Gf hooked me up with a boost Lg volt decided to open it up; before so I rooted the phone I got and tried some roms and camera worked great. Now I have a VM Volt with working camera. Thanks a lot for this post it helped a lot! got you some pictures about the cameras, don,t know if they will help.
**Swapped them today.
 

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I wonder if there is a place to just purchase the camera so I could replace it. Otherwise I am probably going to see if I can purchase a used or non working volt and swap the camera out. Only issue is that I am testing my luck on getting the right camera.

Update: Camera by itself costs more than what I paid for the phone.

Also does anyone know if this was ever carrier specific? I got mine from Virgin Mobile and it was infested with the green tint.

Update: Bought a cheap Boost Volt and found out the model of the camera is the same with the green tints, so it is defiantly not carrier specific.

Looks like it will be hard to get my hands on one of those cameras that has no green tint.
 
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This thread looks to have some interesting imx111 vs imx219 content:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=145815

Also here is sony's marketing page for the imx219:

http://www.sony.net/Products/SC-HP/new_pro/april_2014/imx219_e.html

Note that it's supposed to be an easy drop-in replacement ("small firmware modification can replace this latest image sensor functionally enhanced with ease") for the imx111

Haven't had time to parse it all yet -- mostly posting so I won't forget where it is :)
 
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I don't really know anything about it but I still don't think it's a hardware issue, if one of the old cm11 builds fixes the green tint for the 111 you'd have to think it's software related.

It's a software issue driven by some hardware differences between the two cameras. If there was an appropriate software patch, that would also fix it, but we apparently don't have that for newer android (not sure if it's kernel driver or some userspace component that's affected) so currently the only solution is swapping to one of the cameras that doesn't aggrivate the software.
 
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