I experienced the same issue today when I tried to take a photo directly in Facebook Messenger. Suddenly the camera went black and the app crashed. I then tried opening both GCam (Nikita) and stock camera app and the screen was also black. I tried force stopping all affected apps, but it didn’t help. The only way to fix it was to restart the phone. I’m running stock OS with latest update. As @mde suggested, it seems the driver completely crashed and the OS didn’t restart it.
2 Likes
Same thing here. I have had the same problem using gcam.
Could it perhaps be an issue related to 3rd party cameras such as Gcam? Just a thought, because I frequently use the camera, no issues. I only have one camera installed, the stock one. Of course I sometimes do use apps that use the camera as well to scan a QR code and things like that. But I don’t have another camera installed, or set as the default.
Never had such issues. Using only gcam (different mods) and excessively.
I have the same problem
Today it happened again. I tried to kill all apps with the camera permission, but it didn’t change anything. Even the Torch tile in the quick settings menu claimed that the camera was in use:
I managed to take a few screenshots of failing camera tests (*#*#2886#*#*) and also exported logcat and I sent it all to support. Hope they’ll fix this soon.
I also noticed another interesting thing: My Automate scripts were no longer able to register volume keys presses. Maybe this is somehow connected (some media engine)? To be clear, I could change volume with no problem. I just couldn’t set any action to the key presses. (I use this to turn on the flashlight from lock screen. I also tried restarting Automate, but it didn’t help either.)
2 Likes
Any update on this? I removed gcam because it’s unusable this way. No problem with default camera app, but I like gcam more, because default cam lacks support for Bokeh effect.
What Gcam did you use there are many options so maybe you could try another.
I used GCam_8.1.101_Wichaya_V1.5.apk and NGCam_8.2.300-v1.7.apk. same problem with both versions
1 Like
Just to be clear: Does GCam make your camera freeze instantly or after some time? I use GCam exclusively to take pictures and have not had that problem for months now - not using it excessively, though.
Nikita GCam port 8.2.300-1.5 as above, never bothered to update it so far.
1 Like
At first it works, but then after a few photos the camera goes black. Closing the app doesn’t solve it, and it even breaks the native camera app. Just like Razem indicated above, when you go to quick settings, the torch is indicating ‘camera in use’. Only way to solve it, is to reboot the phone.
By the time, the moment you wanted to photograph is long gone.
It’s strange not everyone has this issue. Maybe it’s only when you use ‘portret’ mode on gcam?
Do you use the Google Pictures Gallery or any third party Gallery with Google Gallery disabled? The newer GCam Ports need the Google Pictures Gallery when you want to go from cam to gallery via the preview. Maybe if Google Gallery is deactivated its causing further issues?
I don’t have the Google Gallery installed and cannot switch to it from the Cam. But I doubt that this is the reason for the freeze as it also happens when that feature is not used.
I’m not really convinced that this is GCam’s fault. It worked fine for me for several months before this behavior started to occur. And I managed to break it even using the camera inside Facebook Messenger. I believe that there is something wrong with the camera driver.
2 Likes
I’m using the default Google Picture Gallery app. In Belgium its called Google Foto’s. Not using a third party Gallery app.
1 Like
Is this still happening? For those who do encounter it, can you reproduce it in safe mode? I take many pictures with my phone. I haven’t experience these issues, which makes be suspect it’s a 3rd party app issue that’s causing it. In that case FP support may not help us with that, but the 3rd party perhaps.
Hasn’t happen to me in the last month, but I disabled the camera permission for most apps and enable it only when I need it (as suggested by support). So it’s possible that some app was causing it. But as it was pretty random, I couldn’t ever reproduce it in safe mode. Sometimes it happened twice a day, sometimes after a week. I can’t run in safe mode for a week. 
But even if it’s caused by some 3rd party app, it shouldn’t be possible to completely cripple the camera driver like this. Every time this happened I tried to manually kill all apps with the camera permission. At that moment, the OS should free the camera for other apps or restart the driver. However, that’s not happening. It just remains stuck as if some app is using the camera.
I recently thought the launcher had a bug because the calendar didn’t open anymore when tapping the date. It turned out an app from work was poorly programmed to be an option to basically open any application, including a calendar. The popup to select which app to use was silent and thus nothing happened.
So it could be a 3rd party app is doing something to the environment that messes everything up. For now I’ll mark this issue in the #wiki as non-producible. If things change we can always revert that.
It happened to me again during holidays where I took a lot of pictures. It is still not reproducible for me, though. Sometimes it happened after only a few pictures, sometimes not for a week. Sometimes it was only the selfie cam that failed and would force-close the GCam app when I tried to switch to it.
1 Like
Maybe we need to update the title then? It may be a GCam issue, the title now suggests it’s a Fairphone camera issue.