HTC One M8 Camera is Slow

metrix

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...I walked into a local T-mobile store, ready to buy my wife an iPhone 6 and perhaps one for myself. Earlier in the day I held a display model iPhone 6+ and the dimensions were just wrong. It didn't feel right at all and was hoping the 6 was better. I'd been curious about switching to Android lately as you'll see in my other posts in this forum. Long story short, both myself and my wife walked out with new HTC One M8's!

They didn't have any iPhone 6, predictably, and we both just decided to jump. I personally had my eye on this phone and the LG G3. Both are stellar but I went with the 8 because HTC at least publicly, stands by their update process. LG is silent on the issue. Anyways, I'm loving this phone. Very fast, very very smooth! The only bugging point for me is the camera. Quality isn't terrible but its sloooooow! Given this, I'm going to be doing some deep thinking the next few days as to whether i can live with it or not, otherwise, I'll trade for the G3.

Anways, thanks for allowing this rant. It's fun to be back on Android, but more important than the OS it's nice to have a phone that doesn't look like everyone else's LOL.

One question: What's the best podcast app out there?
 

Lodingi

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Welcome to Android, and the M8. I'm sure you'll find both a pleasant experience. I find it odd you say the camera is slow. The M8 has by far the fastest camera response on a mobile device. Is one device faster than the other? Hopefully it's just a setting in the software, and not a hardware issue.
 

Android Optimizer

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The only bugging point for me is the camera. Quality isn't terrible but its sloooooow!
I find it odd you say the camera is slow. The M8 has by far the fastest camera response on a mobile device.

I find it odd that as well that metrix says the camera is slow. I find it extremely fast. It takes the picture so fast that many times I wonder if I pressed the button and have to glance in the corner to see a there is a little thumnail of the picture I just took.
metrix,
Are you using the auto settings, and simply clicking on the button to take the picture (which should be instantaneous), are you pressing on an area of the screen (to focus), or are you doing something else when you take the picture?
In addition to the default camera app you can also try the Google Camera to see if its speed and functions are more to your liking than the default camera. (The default offers some features that the Google camera doesn't, but you might not find that you use them that often and you can always switch back and forth depending on what you want to do with your pictures).
 

law2010

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...I walked into a local T-mobile store, ready to buy my wife an iPhone 6 and perhaps one for myself. Earlier in the day I held a display model iPhone 6+ and the dimensions were just wrong. It didn't feel right at all and was hoping the 6 was better. I'd been curious about switching to Android lately as you'll see in my other posts in this forum. Long story short, both myself and my wife walked out with new HTC One M8's!

They didn't have any iPhone 6, predictably, and we both just decided to jump. I personally had my eye on this phone and the LG G3. Both are stellar but I went with the 8 because HTC at least publicly, stands by their update process. LG is silent on the issue. Anyways, I'm loving this phone. Very fast, very very smooth! The only bugging point for me is the camera. Quality isn't terrible but its sloooooow! Given this, I'm going to be doing some deep thinking the next few days as to whether i can live with it or not, otherwise, I'll trade for the G3.

Anways, thanks for allowing this rant. It's fun to be back on Android, but more important than the OS it's nice to have a phone that doesn't look like everyone else's LOL.

One question: What's the best podcast app out there?

Good for you! Welcome to the club. I have been using the M8 since it was launched in March on Verizon. It has run perfectly the entire time.

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metrix

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hey guys, thanks for the responses.

I'm just using the standard settings with both the google cam and the built in one. It's definitely snappy as anything I've ever used under normal circumstances (good lighting, outdoors, etc), but indoors under not-so-great lighting, it seems to struggle to focus and to grab the photo. This might be an issue where there's other things running in the background at the time. I just got the phone less than 24 hours ago and haven't had a ton of time to set it up and tweak the settings. I'll keep messing around and see what I can find.
 

Benjamin_NYC

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My camera is extremely slow. Like 30+ seconds to open the app. 10-15 seconds to close it.

Everything else on the phone is OK speed wise.

Any ideas? Is it possible to reinstall the camera?

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Android Optimizer

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My camera is extremely slow. Like 30+ seconds to open the app. 10-15 seconds to close it.
The camera should open and close almost instantly (mine does). There can be a number of things that could be a factor.
The first things to try are going into App manager -> All -> Camera and clear the cache. You could also try a system clear cache. If those don't speed things up proceed to the next troubleshooting items.
Is your camera app updated to the latest version? Check the Play Store and see if there is a software update for it.
Do you have a lot of things saved to your gallery (or wherever your camera is set to save things)? Since the camera is tied to the gallery if it takes a long time to load the gallery it may in turn slow down the opening of the camera. Try opening your gallery, and see if that's slow too. Like with the camera make sure you have the most up to date software for the gallery from the play store. Where is your phone set to save to (the phone itself or an SD card)? If it is set to save to an SD card you may have a slow, corrupt, or damaged SD card. If you go into storage settings on your phone tell it to unmount your SD card, and see if that makes a difference to opening and closing speed. If it makes a difference the next thing to troubleshoot is your SD card.

Another thing you can try (that should speed up most if not all of your apps) is switch from Dalvik to ART for your run time.
 

Benjamin_NYC

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The camera should open and close almost instantly (mine does). There can be a number of things that could be a factor.
The first things to try are going into App manager -> All -> Camera and clear the cache. You could also try a system clear cache. If those don't speed things up proceed to the next troubleshooting items.
Is your camera app updated to the latest version? Check the Play Store and see if there is a software update for it.
Do you have a lot of things saved to your gallery (or wherever your camera is set to save things)? Since the camera is tied to the gallery if it takes a long time to load the gallery it may in turn slow down the opening of the camera. Try opening your gallery, and see if that's slow too. Like with the camera make sure you have the most up to date software for the gallery from the play store. Where is your phone set to save to (the phone itself or an SD card)? If it is set to save to an SD card you may have a slow, corrupt, or damaged SD card. If you go into storage settings on your phone tell it to unmount your SD card, and see if that makes a difference to opening and closing speed. If it makes a difference the next thing to troubleshoot is your SD card.

Another thing you can try (that should speed up most if not all of your apps) is switch from Dalvik to ART for your run time.

I cleared the cache, and it seems faster. Thanks. Funny thing is there was only 32kb in the cache, but is is faster now!

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Benjamin_NYC

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Also I can't seem to find how to update the camera. Or even check for updates. In Play Store, I search for Camera or HTC Camera or anything by HTC, and I can't find it. I find Gallery, but not Camera.

Is it in the Play Store?

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Android Optimizer

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Camera is slow again. I did a cache partition wipe. Camera is still slow to launch and shut down.
On the 12th you wrote that when you switched to ART you enabled high performance mode. If you still have that enabled try disabling high performance mode, clear the cache again, and see if that makes a difference. Where is your gallery stored, and where is your camera set to save pictures and video (to an SD card or your phone)?
 

mrsmumbles

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...I walked into a local T-mobile store, ready to buy my wife an iPhone 6 and perhaps one for myself. Earlier in the day I held a display model iPhone 6+ and the dimensions were just wrong. It didn't feel right at all and was hoping the 6 was better. I'd been curious about switching to Android lately as you'll see in my other posts in this forum. Long story short, both myself and my wife walked out with new HTC One M8's!

They didn't have any iPhone 6, predictably, and we both just decided to jump. I personally had my eye on this phone and the LG G3. Both are stellar but I went with the 8 because HTC at least publicly, stands by their update process. LG is silent on the issue. Anyways, I'm loving this phone. Very fast, very very smooth! The only bugging point for me is the camera. Quality isn't terrible but its sloooooow! Given this, I'm going to be doing some deep thinking the next few days as to whether i can live with it or not, otherwise, I'll trade for the G3.

Anways, thanks for allowing this rant. It's fun to be back on Android, but more important than the OS it's nice to have a phone that doesn't look like everyone else's LOL.

One question: What's the best podcast app out there?

Podcasts: PocketCasts and BeyondPod.
 

ffejjj

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Congrats on the new phone. M8 and G3 are both to tier devices. I went with the G3 and love it.

Posted via Android Central App
 

Benjamin_NYC

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On the 12th you wrote that when you switched to ART you enabled high performance mode. If you still have that enabled try disabling high performance mode, clear the cache again, and see if that makes a difference. Where is your gallery stored, and where is your camera set to save pictures and video (to an SD card or your phone)?

Do you mean just the camera cache or the partitition? Everything stored in phone. No SD card in this phone.

I can try disabling HP mode, but camera has been slow since day one.

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metrix

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Congrats on the new phone. M8 and G3 are both to tier devices. I went with the G3 and love it.

Posted via Android Central App

Thanks man!

I'm loving it. So much faster than my old iPhone 4s. I'm still a tad iffy on the camera, though, so there's a chance I may return it for the G3. However I've been able to take some pretty good pics with the camera as is. Outside of the camera this phone is a screamer. Good looks and decent battery. Once I get the background data usage trimmed down I'm pretty sure it'll get more efficient.

Any recommended apps?
 

I Can Be Your Hero

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Grats on purchasing the One M8.

As others have said, the HTC One has one of, if not the fastest camera snappers in Android. Photos should be pretty much instantaneous. If it's not, it might be defective and I'd suggest taking it back.

Are you able to provide a video of the delay from pressing the camera shutter to when it takes the photo?

Also, if you like fast/speedy phones, might want to steer clear of the LG G3. It's not as fast as the One and has pretty frequent UI stutter and long loading for apps when I use it.
 
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Benjamin_NYC

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Grats on purchasing the One M8.

As others have said, the HTC One has one of, if not the fastest camera snappers in Android. Photos should be pretty much instantaneous. If it's not, it might be defective and I'd suggest taking it back.

Are you able to provide a video of the delay from pressing the camera shutter to when it takes the photo?

Also, if you like fast/speedy phones, might want to steer clear of the LG G3. It's not as fast as the One and has pretty frequent UI stutter and long loading for apps when I use it.

Usually my camera is very fast to snap. But sometimes, it can try focusing for 10+ seconds. And as I've said, launching and shutting down the app is very slow.

For all the camera complaints that the m8 gets, I'd say the photo quality is high. It's just the workings of the app that need work, for me at least.

Posted via Android Central App
 

metrix

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Usually my camera is very fast to snap. But sometimes, it can try focusing for 10+ seconds. And as I've said, launching and shutting down the app is very slow.

For all the camera complaints that the m8 gets, I'd say the photo quality is high. It's just the workings of the app that need work, for me at least.

Posted via Android Central App

I've not had issues launching the app. That typically opens immediately. The issue I'd seen was stuttering and bogging down while the camera app is open. Usually it would happen in lower/poor light conditions. That being said 95% of the time touching the shutter button grabs the picture right away. I think what may be happening is stuff in the background is bogging the phone down, chewing up precious clock cycles. I've disabled auto app updating and I'm going to start filtering out some other items as well. Hopefully that'll make things better.
 

Android Optimizer

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Do you mean just the camera cache or the partitition? Everything stored in phone. No SD card in this phone.

It wouldn't hurt to clear both. Before launching the camera app go into App manager -> Running . What do you have listed? Launch the camera app, and then once again go in and look at what is listed as running.
For reference here is what I have in my running list before launching it:
Settings
GSam Battery Monitor
SmartcardService
Google Play services
Htc Service Pack
VZWAPNService
Message+
My InfoZone
Support & Protection
Verizon Location Agent
Kid Mode
People
SwiftKey

If you see apps other than that go to App manager -> All and Force Stop them (at least temporarily)
Now if you launch the camera app does it still take time to load?

Here is a list of what is listed in Running after launching the camera on my phone (in addition to what was previously mentioned) and then pressing the home button from within the camera . Do you see anything additional to these and the earlier apps on your phone?

HTCMirrorLink

(as you can see only one additional app is active with camera running in the background)

If ending running programs sped up your camera launch / shut down then your next step is to determine which of the extra running apps is responsible for the slow down, and deciding if you really need/want it on your phone.
 

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