Try taking a picture of animals, they move even quicker than people, it’s just ridiculous.
That said today I was trying to take a close up of the fabric of pair of jeans (textile nerd) - it blurred the detail of the weave of the fabric in a itchy way and turned indigo blue to grey - I couldn’t get a decent picture indoors or out. So I’m back to taking pictures with a camera, transferring over wi-fi to phone or laptop to post on social media - I bought a new phone to avid having to do this. so totally fed up.
What’s more I think it’s crazy that one has to think of upgrading the phone in the hope that it may deliver on the specs promised by the previous model - hardly sustainable or ethical.
2 Likes
Would you mind sharing which app you’ve installed that is working for you? I’m making a list of recommended apps with the pros and cons that other users have noted to see what’s best to try. I’d be much happier with a fully manual app that works like a manual camera (a technology I’m much more familiar with) than trying to wrestle against the camera software in this phone which automates everything terribly.
1 Like
Reply, no you’re not the only one - I had similar issues using the HDR in landscape pictures - the sky looked like this while vegetation in the foreground sparkled like water does when the light catches it - totally not what I was looking at.
Thanks for your series of comparisons, they’re really helpful.
When starting this thread I thought it might be that my phone was faulty or I was doing something wrong - the pictures were poor, the HDR made things worse rather than better and the scene categories seem to make no difference whatsoever. Now I’m resigned to it being the limitations of the phone software.
So I’m off to try other software and invest more time in trying to make this thing useable for the things I bought it for in the first place.
Sure. It’s called “ProCam X”. Cost about 2€ if i remember right. Sadly it doesn’t recognize the ultrawide and it’s not very performant, so if you do auto mode you’ll likely wait for a second or two until it’s done processing.
So we can basically conclude that FP may add 2 euros to their prices and within a few years they have the budget to develop a better camera. “For the price of a cup of coffee”, as they say themselves when talking about fair wages 
1 Like
Tbh…
Better yes. Good? No. Not even adequate for the normal consumer.
Weird, I thought I come and peek how things are going over here after a view years, but it appears that there is not much changed…
I like the principle of fair. If it’s not working, it’s not durable and fair to the people and environment as well. The phone works. But I want it also to use it as a camera.
I was hoping that the FP3 would function as a camera. I can’t handle the frustration of the bad camera, the time to focus, wrong focus, delaying the shot, not willing to take the shot at all…
I was hoping that the FP4 would function better, but now it seems still unresolved?!
Especially with my daughter growing up, I want to use it as a camera. Now I’m considering to buy a two year disposable. Just for the joy of a good camera, hoping the FP5 as a consumer friendly good camera… Which just works, as a camera, with the installed app/ software, with nice colors, but mostly fast response.
3 Likes
From my experience with the camera i told a few friends to not buy this phone because they have children growing up or dogs / pets running around. I let them test the camera of my phone, in bright light and in normal lighted evenings indoor.
Even if they wanted the fair thing, this would probably destroy memorys of situations because children and animals are naturally moving.
If I make a shot and it take seconds to take the picture because exposure in not daylight conditions is so terribly slow the people really don’t understand how sustainable this is. Bases in my experience and opinion only.
6 Likes
So, is there any solution to the bad image quality issue? My FP4 is up to date, but the camera is just so bad… my 6+ years old HTC takes much better pictures.
The colours are off even when taking photos outside, and pictures lack detail.
1 Like
I think I read a hint that Fairphone is considering doing something about this, eventually. Sorry, can’t remember where but it came from a Fairphone employee.
That been said, unless they adapt something already existing and working (like the Pixel camera apps), it will probably be a long and buggy road, where they add a feature, then we wait a while for the new bugs to be fixed, then they eventually add something else, new bugs to iron out, and so on. -sigh-
But it’s nice they didn’t drop the ball on the quaint old FP4. 
I also remember it. I think it was somewhere along FP5 comments - FP was saying that they plan to invest heavily in the FP5 camera app and that the FP4 app should also benefit from this. But if they keep the current pace of development, we might get a usable camera app as soon as Android 16 or 18 
3 Likes
Edit: I’m on the latest beta for the FP4
I’m running FP4.TP29.C.0101.20240121 based on Android 13 which has a new version of the camera app (v7.00.04.0007.4.0), and so far I’m very happy with it. Some issues that are solved for me with this version:
- The camera doesn’t crash anymore when switching between front and back camera. A crash on the previous version required the phone to be restarted before the camera would be functional again (in any app).
- Photos in low light are better (less grainy, less blurry)
- Photos in daylight are sharper (as in, the shutter time seems to be shorter while still getting enough light)
- Photos you take are actually saved!! I often pressed the shutter multiple times, only to find out that one or two out of a dozen pictures were actually saved.
- The overall UI of the camera app is better
This made me switch back to the stock camera app from a modded Google camera app.
FP4.TP29.C.0101.20240121? Was there an update for the FP4? I still have the version FP4.TP25.C.095.20231219.
Probably rhis is the actual beta version
2 Likes
Correct, I’m on the latest beta for the FP4. Sorry for not mentioning it in my post! (edited now)
2 Likes
Really good news! Thank you!
The new Camera app is indeed much better than before.
I now use it more often than “Manual Camera Pro : DSLR Cam”.
What I miss, however, is the “quick” switching between fixed scenes or switching to automatic scene recognition.
Have I overlooked something?