I have a Fairphone 4 5G running Android 13 (FP4.TP29.C.0101.20240121). The default camera app, ‘Camera’, is v7.00.04.0007.4.0.
Any picture I take with the default camera app won’t display in Google Photos until I restart my phone. After I restart my phone all my pictures appear, but I’ll still have grey squares sitting around.
“A Google Photos problem!” you say? Well, other apps also can’t see these pictures. See my one screenshot where I’m trying to attach a picture to a message.
Also, other apps can take pictures like normal. It seems like it’s just the ‘Camera’ app that’s doing something strange.
The attached screenshots might do the best job at explaining what’s happening. I can’t tie this to any particular update or setting change.
Does anyone know what’s happening or what I might try to fix this?
Thank you! Before a restart all pictures are grey boxes
Here’s an example of my messaging app not being able to see pictures taken by the ‘Camera’ app, but perfectly happy to take and send pictures of its own.
Weird mine doesn’t do this at all - it can take a few seconds to appear anywhere as it processes but never that long.
Have you tried Reset Settings in the camera app settings, and trying saving Internal not SD card / that it’s an accessible folder? Looks like it might be on external meaning SD card? Can add processing time…
Mine is pretty quick to store them, and I notice your address is going to ‘external’. I’ve checked and mine are being saved internally, so maybe - as dwinter also noted - you have an external SD card? If you can swap to internal memory, then try see if this is quicker?
I haven’t had an SD card in my phone before, but I did just put one in to see. In the ‘Camera’ app I switched to “External” storage.
Same result. But, when I went and browsed the SD card I could see that the following directory structure had been made:
boot/ (Name of my SD card)
boot/DCIM/IMG_202403…,jpg (0 bytes)
boot/DCIM/Camera/IMG_202403…,jpg (3.6MB)
So it’s making an empty image file in DCIM, but then saving the full-on image in DCIM/Camera. I imagine that’s also what it’s doing when I’m saving to my internal storage.
So, I can confirm this… Looking in my internal storage, under “Fairphone 4 5G/DCIM/” I have a bunch of empty image files, then under “Fairphone 4 5G/DCIM/Camera/” are many, many pictures.
Go into the camera settings app and check where the storage is going. Mine is internal and I can’t change this as I’ve no SD card in it. Maybe yours is set to SD card? You can also reset all settings there, though you’ve maybe tried this before.
Yeah, I’ve done this. I’ve been switching between “Internal” and “External” storage as I’ve been playing with the SD card. I’ve also deleted all the user data for the Camera app.
Because of the strange zero byte files being made I’ve also tried disabling Syncthing (which shouldn’t be touching any photos folders).
I’ve also removed the one app I’ve installed lately (a voice recording app), but no difference.
No, but as far as I know I still have a ticket open with Fairphone regarding this.
My workaround has been:
Open the “Files” app
In the side menu, go to “Fairphone 4 5G”
Go to “DCIM”
Delete any “0 B” (zero bytes) image files
Go into the “Camera” folder
Tap the three dots in the top right, go “Sort by…” and pick “Modified (newest first)”
Tap each photo that isn’t showing up in Google Photos, then just go back to open the next.
Now open Google Photos.
Or, restart the phone.
Clearly, a terrible workaround, but I’ve been living with it this whole time. Fairphone support suggested wiping the phone and starting over, I told them I’d wait to hear back but that was 4 months ago.
Thanks a lot for your fast reply and your help. In the meantime I have received a first reply from support and followed their suggestion to install an open source camera which is working so far. Will let you know if sth turms out to be a solution withe the default camera so you can stop the workaround.
Margo
I just want to add that I have the exact same problem as the OP on my brand new FP4.
Reading through this thread, and as a FP user since the original FP1, and therefore not expecting any quick solutions or even answers from Fairphone, I installed an external open source camera app which works fine (Libre Camera).
I’d be interested to hear camera app recommendations from others here!
