Is it true that android doesn't let apps use the camera?

asim18 · 5 Jul 2018 at 20:43

I know someone who's an iPhone fan. Apparently Android doesn't let apps use the camera directly, and every time an app needs to take a photo it needs to screenshot the screen to generate a photo, and if its a video it will need to screen capture the screen to generate a video from the camera which the app can use.

And apparently iPhone lets apps access the raw data from the camera so they get better quality snapchats, etc.

Is this true?

asim18 · 5 Jul 2018 at 20:44

It just sounds bizarre because I'm sure you can get third party camera apps, so any photo captured using such an app would be limited to your screen resolution.

kona786 · 5 Jul 2018 at 21:33

You answered your own question.

The person you know is a moron.

Kainz · 5 Jul 2018 at 22:18

Your mate is an absolute tool, but partially correct.

It looks like he's heard this info from a mate who's heard this info from a mate and rinse and repeat. The iPhone doesn't do anything different from what every other phone does.

What your clueless mate is banging on about describes how Snapchat apparently used to work in its early incarnations. The app was so badly written because the devs preferred ios that the android version was a mess. Whilst I don't use the service I did read about it a good while back in that the app would literally take a snapshot of the screen for snaps.

As for raw sensor data, android phones have long been able to capture that. My S8+ does jpg+raw if needed. Imo it isn't really that useful on a phone with a tiny sensor in the first place.

Matteysan · 6 Jul 2018 at 10:12

Kainz said:
Your mate is an absolute tool, but partially correct.

It looks like he's heard this info from a mate who's heard this info from a mate and rinse and repeat. The iPhone doesn't do anything different from what every other phone does.

What your clueless mate is banging on about describes how Snapchat apparently used to work in its early incarnations. The app was so badly written because the devs preferred ios that the android version was a mess. Whilst I don't use the service I did read about it a good while back in that the app would literally take a snapshot of the screen for snaps.

As for raw sensor data, android phones have long been able to capture that. My S8+ does jpg+raw if needed. Imo it isn't really that useful on a phone with a tiny sensor in the first place.

This is correct.

Psycho Sonny · 10 Jul 2018 at 14:29

if anything android lets you do a lot more than what apple does.

it's basically open source. whereas apple like to lock everything down and control it.