Slow camera experience

[klowet]

Hi

When taking pictures with my FP3+, I experience that it is slow. Sometimes it takes 5 or more seconds to take and save a picture. Sometimes the picture is just not saved and disappears. I use the stock camera app of the FP3+.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Kris

[anon9989719]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Here are a few things to check/try

• Do you use an SD card and how is it formatted?
  • ✏ A little guide to... using SD cards
  • Note the eject icon
• Please check to see how much memory you have left, under 4GB often seems to be an issue.

How to improve reduced speed of operation

That’s a lot! I think the phone has to keep 4Gb for swap memory, so you best do some more cleaning

• Ensure you are not using HDR which is a slow process.
• Try alternate apps like Open Camera or Nikta Gcam
• Read similar topic(s)

Fairphone 3+ Camera Speed

For what’s it worth, my Google Pixel 3 also sometimes has some difficulties starting the camera. But then it’s about 2-3 seconds. Maybe it’s a memory issue? 4GB might be not enough for 2021.

[Kira_West]

I also have this problem, though I have more than 4GB free, and my SD card is formatted to external. Same issue occurs with Open Camera. Really frustrating. Any other ideas?

[anon9989719]

@Kira_West

though I have more than 4GB free

Hi and welcome to the forum.

• Try and make some space on the internal memory.
  Clear the cache on many or all the apps.

• Do you store the photos on the SD card
  Saving to the SD card is slow. I don’t mind if I don’t use HDR+ etc. but to store quickly on the main memory means I then transfer to the SD card if necessary.

Just to be sure, the SD card when formatted as External you will see an eject icon to the right.

Then there’s trhe option of doing a safe mode start to ensure no custom apps or old data is messing with the system
and of course finding someone with an FP3 to compare. By the way do you have the FP3, the FP3+ or a manually upgraded FP3.

Maybe there is a fairphoneangel near you that can help?

https://forum.fairphone.com/t/the-fairphone-angels-program-and-map-local-support-by-community-members/33058/2

[Kira_West]

Hi Amoun,

Thanks for your reply! I’m using a Fair phone 3+.

I have lots of free space on internal memory. And indeed the eject icon is there for the SD card.

I do save photos on the SD card though, so I’ll try saving on internal storage and see if that helps.its a shame though, that seems like a pretty basic feature, I hope that will improve in an update soon.

Thanks again,
Kira

[anon9989719]

@Kira_West

that seems like a pretty basic feature, I hope that will improve in an update soon.

If you find the slowness isn’t as bad by storing on internal memory this isn’t really a feature of the phone. It’s more a feature of the SD card. Some can write fater than others and the ‘internal’ memory is selected to be very fast.

The only other hardware issue is that HDR operations are carried out on the camera chip but that would cause more a delay more after the fact and slow down the option to take another quicker. Also check the format etc.

[Kira_West]

Indeed, but I have used this same SD card with several other phones with no problems at all, also with HDR. I still have a longer delay saving to internal storage than with other phones I’ve had. I just hope it will be improved in the future so Fairphone can keep expanding to new users

[Willlem]

I seem to have a similar issue.
The default camera app takes very long to load, when I take a picture it takes very long before it shows up on the bottom left of the camera app. And sometimes it just refuses to take the picture. For instance, if I take 5 pictures after one another, only 3 show up in the camera roll.
And this used to be better, these 5 photos in a row were no problem in the past.

Not sure if it’s related, I know there’s different topics about it, but when using the camera to record a video of live music, the audio is terribly distorted.
If replacing the camera would solve/improve both issues I would, but I doubt it will…

[anon9989719]

@Willlem

If replacing the camera would solve/improve both issues I would, but I doubt it will…

Yes changing the camera is a no go.

You may have HDR+ enabled which means the camera takes multple pictures and thgen processes, so taking many shots quickly in row won’t work as you discovered.

The sound is a different issue, I’ll look for a link but you can check for ‘audio clipping’ etc. It seems a lot of sounds are ‘too’ loud and audio is clipped etc.

Very low quality audio recordings

I made a video comparing the sound of a song with the default Camera app VS Open Camera (with different audio input settings): Default audio is good when simply talking to the phone, but absolutly not when singing or playing music. But, as @corvuscorax pointed, “unprocessed” audio usually needs to amplify the gain to get a decent/normal audio level (I found that you can do it easily in Audiofix, but it would be really nice if you can choose the entry level or a kind of auto input level). May…

You may also like to try Open Camera for the sound. It has a lower volume and doesn’t clip.

[Willlem]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I don’t think it’s (only) the HDR+ setting which causes the slowness. Because it’s also slow with HDR+ turned off, and processing videos for instance. (It saves videos and photos to the internal HD, not to the SD card, just to be sure.) It’s workable, just annoying.

The audio distorting is not workable; when at a festival I ask my friends to film a band, send the video to myself via whatsapp to upload it to instagram on my phone. And previously I could do this with my phone without any problems. The same happened with my FP2, and for that reason I got the FP3. Now I have to upgrade to FP4 to have a FP to shoot videos with sound, very annoying, and wasteful.

I checked the other thread before, and already tried the Open Camera app with the unprocessed sound, but the level is too low to be usable I’m afraid…
[Will also post this in that thread]

[anon9989719]

@Willlem

Now I have to upgrade to FP4 to have a FP to shoot videos with sound, very annoying, and wasteful.

Is that going to work ??

[Willlem]

Well, the weird thing is that both the FP2 and 3 didn’t have this issue when I first got them. It started later on, still not sure what caused it (software updates?). So, I don’t think I will replace my 3 with a 4, but rather buy another brand, which is an even less sustainable solution unfortunately.

[anon9989719]

Have you tried a factory reset as if that works then it must be a user issue