I know I'm not the first person to think about this but the more I think into it the angrier I get. Snapchat singlehandedly created the stigma that "Android cameras suck" or "Androids are slow." Snapchat's refusal to create an app that actually uses the camera API, or at least optimize the app itself, has made for a horrible experience on Android since day 1. Even as Android cameras surpassed iPhones long ago, Snapchat never took the time to implement a proper capture function from the camera, and instead opted to take a screen capture of the camera view. Due to Snap's popularity, especially among teens to young adults, the image that Android is horrible spread like wildfire. The years of Snapchat being so popular, and being so unoptimized for Android has permanently tarnished the record of Android for a huge percentage of that age group. If Snapchat had optimized, even for just a handful of major Android phones, that entire view would've faded significantly years ago. But they didn't, and now the generation who's addicted to Snapchat will forever see every Android phone as a piece of junk for poor people.
Edit: So a lot of people are interpreting this wrong and I want to clarify. I'm speaking on experience with my age demographic. Sure you can say "Snapchat is dead nobody uses it" all you want but my age group does use it. Many rely on it. Having a poor preforming Snapchat app is a deal breaker for many people I've talked to when discussing Android vs iPhone. So maybe this seems like a stretch for some people to believe, but the influencer community, internet meme communities, casual teenage users, and the like have had poor experiences with Snapchat on Android and now associate Android with poor camera quality.
Those of you who have a Galaxy S22 (not Ultra), does it still just screenshot the camera preview and look generally terrible when using Snapchat? Is the video still 15fps in dark rooms? I'm on a S9+ currently, and compared to my girlfriends iPhone 13 the S9+ looks absolutely horrible in Snapchat.
I upgraded from an S9+ that would screen record in Snapchat. The photos are definitely improved. You can tell that its processing the photos after capture and they look a lot better than the preview that would normally be screenshot. However, both the selfie camera and back cameras are noticeably zoomed in to match the aspect ratio of the screen, which kinda sucks. You can mitigate this by using the wide-angle lens, but the quality of that lens is noticeably worse than the 1x.
Video, which was my biggest concern, is unfortunately the worst part. It's exactly the same as on my S9+. Screen recording the preview, stuttering and low framerate. I have compared videos from Snapchat and the camera app in different lighting conditions, dark and light, and it's not even a low light issue. In the camera app I can shoot great videos at UHD 60, and they look smooth as hell, but in Snapchat it feels like 1080p 24 after heavy compression. It doesn't even seem to use the Optical Image Stabilization.
The Galaxy S22 was the first set of Samsung devices to bring the camera app's native Night Mode to different social media apps like Snapchat and Instagram, but Samsung is actively working on bringing the feature to its predecessors, SamMobile reports. While it's not a guarantee that all native camera features will be available on Snapchat for S21 models, having Samsung's low-light processing in the social media app will be a boon.
Even with the new implementation of camera features in older devices, Snapchat still has many issues to sort out. If the app is ever not working properly, check out our 16 potential ways to fix Snapchat when things aren't working as they should.
I have tried putting the phone on mute/do not disturb and having the ringer volume, alarm volume, and media volume off, and it still makes the sound. I have gone into the camera app settings and turned off the camera sounds, which works for my default camera app (I can take pictures on it with no sound) but it still makes the sound on Snapchat.
Snapchat doesn't directly use Xiaomi camera. It takes a screenshot of what happens on the screen through the camera. It doesn't actually take a 'photo'. I read it in an article. Try comparing Snapchat photos with camera photos with Xiaomi phone. The difference is absurd.
Snapchat doesn't want to make so many configurations for every Android phone that is getting pushed out on the market. Different resolutions, screen ratios, camera, etc., so they made a standard for probably all non-flagship phones I think. I got Mi Mix 1, this one is affected by this standard.
Switch it to the front camera on your phone so when your app opens, it shows you on the app screen. And now there's no more sound when you open or close your app, as long as you are using the front camera and always set it back to open the front camera on your phone.
Instead of taking an actual photo with your actual camera, the app just takes a screengrab of your camera view. This way, one image-capture method works on most Android phones, even if the picture is worse for it.
My teenage daughter bought an FP2 because she is so convinced about the sustainability concept and I encouraged her to buy it (and funded the higher price compared to other Android phone. Unfortunetely the quality of the front camera is very poor, i.e the flash when using snapchat is not really working and the picture quality is bad.
We bought the FP2 in July 2018. Android 6.01. Frond Camera Omnivision OV5670.
At Google I/O 2022, Google announced a host of new features that will improve how efficiently third-party apps such as Snapchat, Instagram, and others use the camera and video functions on Android smartphones. The tech giant is also making significant changes to the camera functionality on Android 13 to ensure the output images replicate the preview you see before capturing that image.
Google has a significant edge over competitors when it comes to computational photography. Besides leading with its Pixel line of smartphones that extensively use algorithmic enhancements to capture images with a quality that is often likened to professional cameras like DSLRs, Google, as the creator and sustainer of Android, also provides a standard suite of tools to allow seamless integration between software features and the camera hardware on a device.
Until now, Google has depended on manufacturers to incorporate CameraX Vendor Extensions on their devices for functions such as portrait or night mode. These extensions are highly customized by manufacturers based on the hardware per smartphone. CameraX allows these extensions to be used by apps other than the native camera app on any Android device without the developer of that app having to program each of those features separately.
Aside from general improvements to how Android apps use camera features, Google is also adding specific functionality to improve the camera functionality in Android 13. With the next version of Android, Google will be improving the previews that we see on the camera apps. Using preview stabilization, Google aims to make the output images consistent with the previews so there is a minimal difference between what you saw before and what you got after the image was captured. This further eliminates the need to edit photos at a later stage to get the desired results.
Android 13 will also work toward synchronizing the frame rate of the display and the camera preview frame rate to ensure there is no stuttering or disparity between the preview and what the camera hardware is capturing at any given instance. You will no longer have to worry about your images turning out different from what they looked like in the preview. To ensure a smooth and lifelike preview, Google will enhance the preview frame rate from 30 frames per second (fps) to 60 fps in the camera mode to cut out any jitters or lag.
Finally, Android 13 will be adding support for HDR video in-camera apps and the CameraX library so that the stock camera app, as well as other third-party apps using the cameras, can utilize HDR capabilities while recording videos. For this feature to be enabled, an Android device must support at least the HLG10 standard for HDR, along with 10-bit camera capture. This feature will likely be restricted to high-end devices such as the OnePlus 10 Pro or the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. Still, it is a welcome step for HDR video capabilities for more devices in the future.
Ever since Android 5.0 Lollipop, apps can have full access to your device's camera hardware using a feature called Camera2 API. This means that they can have manual exposure controls, capture RAW images to do post-processing themselves, and tons of other goodies that can make pictures taken by third-party apps look just as great as they do with Android's stock camera app.
But Snapchat doesn't use this awesome feature. Instead, their Android app just asks to look at what your camera sees, then records the results. Compare that to an app like Instagram that actually taps into your camera's hardware to take full-resolution photos using Camera2 API, and you'll see an obvious difference:
Same picture, same angle, same phone, yet wildly different results. Today's Android phones have top-notch camera hardware that's obviously capable of taking great photos, so why can't Snapchat? The problem here is better explained if we take a look at the Snapchat app for iOS to do some more comparing.
On first glance, the Android picture quality might look a bit better, so let's just focus in on the zoomed area. Keep in mind that the Pixel XL has the highest-rated smartphone camera ever, so sharpness and contrast are a bit more pleasing to the eye. But even with inferior camera hardware, the Snapchat picture taken with the iPhone 6 is far less pixelated with much higher resolution:
356178063d