Phantom Update fixes Autofocus Issue on Droid
by sm on Nov.17, 2009, under Devices, News
The much reported camera auto-focus bug on the Droid suddenly disappeared this morning, giving much speculation to a secret OTA update, pushed by Verizon. In a strange twist, the bug turns out to be connected to the date and a rounding error causing the problem.
Huh? Why is the camera auto-focus using the date?
Dan Morrill from the Android Team confirms:
There’s a rounding-error bug in the camera driver’s autofocus routine (which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly on a 24.5-day cycle. That is, it’ll work for 24.5 days, then have poor performance for 24.5 days, then work again.
The 17th is the start of a new “works correctly” cycle, so the devices will be fine for a while. A permanent fix is in the works.
The first bug-fix OTA Update is scheduled for December 11, which is before the next “funny” cycle kicks in. Let’s hope Verizon can make the date…
November 17th, 2009 on 5:10 pm
Things I'd like to know
1) Does any other software use dates in a similar manner?
2) More generally, does this rounding bug manifest in places entirely unrelated to dates? (do people still have problems with the echo?)
3) Is the rounding bug a result of assumptions made by the Motorola hardware or the Android software?
4) Is it possible that a fixing the rounding bug could break something else?
November 19th, 2009 on 9:33 am
These are all very good questions. We'll have to wait and see. The good news is that Motorola, Verizon and Google are all very motivated to fix problems quickly and the droid user community is growing rapidly every day, giving it even more exposure. A good test will be to see if Verizon can make the first OTA update date on December 11. Blackberry Storm owners had to wait months before they got a first patch release.
November 19th, 2009 on 2:33 pm
These are all very good questions. We'll have to wait and see. The good news is that Motorola, Verizon and Google are all very motivated to fix problems quickly and the droid user community is growing rapidly every day, giving it even more exposure. A good test will be to see if Verizon can make the first OTA update date on December 11. Blackberry Storm owners had to wait months before they got a first patch release.