Bug: Weather Live Wallpaper, Lock Screen & Camera Launching

[jeffreytz]

OK after a factory reset and then exchanging my phone at Sprint, I have finally determined why the Camera application would crash whenever I tried to load it directly from the lock screen. It's a conflict with the HTC Weather Live Wallpaper. Here's the scenario:

- HTC Weather Live Wallpaper is the active wallpaper
- Lock screen is set to Wallpaper (default)

With this setup, anytime I attempt to launch the camera app by dragging the icon into the unlock circle it either loads for an instant and then drops me back on the home screen or just goes straight to the home screen as if I just pulled the ring up to unlock the phone.

NOTE: this is NOT the same as selecting the Weather Lock screen (that actually works fine).

Since this was repeatable on two different EVO 4G LTEs it seems to be a weird random bug with the Weather live wallpaper when its displayed on the lock screen. If I switch to another live wallpaper like the Nexus one and use the Wallpaper lock screen, the camera opens fine. As soon as I change back to the Weather live wallpaper the camera won't load from the lock screen again.

The easy solution around this if you want weather on your lock screen is to just use the Weather lock screen; the camera loads every time from this one. So right now my setup is Weather lock screen, and the Weather Live wallpaper, and now my camera loads every time I want it to.

Crazy, but at least I know what it is now and how to avoid it

 

[web05hitz]

Thanks for the research and "solution" to this. I have the same problem, and it even manifested in a really annoying additional bug: I was in the camera app when the screen timed out. Later I unlocked my phone to call someone. I was able to dial, but then the last image from the camera app was sort of pasted over the whole screen so I couldn't control anything. Kind of embarrasing when the call connected before I realized it and then I couldn't hang up!

There's still another problem, however. When you are on the home screen with a live wallpaper, if you try to go directly to camera via a shortcut or the camera button, it frequently launches very slow or sometimes not at all. So, basically, the bug seems to be that the camera will not launch properly from a live wallpaper screen. I wonder if its a problem with memory-hogging HTC applications. Gonna try from Apex...

 

[web05hitz]

Well, I get the same problem launching from Apex home screen directly to camera. It really doesn't like the "Lava" live wallpaper - the camera controls flash on screen for a second then disappear. The other wallpapers seem better.

Edit: Now it seems to launch OK even with Lava Flow. Odd

 

[RyDawgBoston]

I had a live wallpaper and it was freezing my apps and sending bug crashes to htc. I don't use them anymore. Sad that they are there, but this phone can not handle them. I am gonna return it for a gs3. I'm dissapointed.

 

[jeffreytz]

Frankly I'm finding Sense 4.0 on this phone is a half-baked mess. I look for great camera phones because I upload a lot of pictures to Facebook, and the EVO 4G LTE is next to worthless in this regard. Forget Sprint's slow 3G network, I'm talking about uploading pictures over a 25 mb/s WiFi connection. This phone triple posts the same picture even though it's only selected once, the uploader will completely lock up if you try and do more than one picture at a time, and it really only likes to upload if you watch the notification bar as it uploads. I'm on my second EVO (HTC recommended I swap out my launch day unit) and both phones function exactly the same way so this is something to do with Sense and it's integration with Facebook. I haven't heard of people having the same issues with the One X models so this must be something unique with the build for the EVO.

I'm giving up on this phone for now, combine these issues with no LTE network and it's just not a pleasant experience, regardless how good the physical hardware is. I switched back to my Galaxy Nexus on T-Mobile today and it is a night and day difference as to how easily the phone accomplished what I needed it to do.

I've reported my bugs to HTC, hopefully there will be a maintenance release soon.

 

[jeffreytz]

FYI I did get some feedback from HTC technical support on this, as follows:

"First, attempt to clear data from the HTC Sense interface itself. From the Home screen, access the application list and tap Settings>Apps. Locate and select HTC Sense followed by Clear Data and, if available, Force Stop. Keep in mind that this will clear any customizations you have made to the Home and Lock screens. Also other information will not be affected. Once done, you can then perform a soft reset by pressing and holding the power button for 45 seconds. This will ensure the software is fully rebooted. Then power back on and test the camera again. If needed, you can also perform the above steps with the Camera application."

I tried this and it seems for the most part it has worked; I say most part because I did manage to get it (loading the camera) to fail once from the lock screen and once just from the home screen (phone already unlocked), but granted I was hammering the thing over and over again and that could have caused it to happen. It seems much more stable now.

We'll see if it holds up over the next few days - my gut is it may not, since the phone initially worked fine out of the box with these settings and over the course of a couple of days began to have the camera app crashing issues (although the second EVO did it about two hours after unboxing).

I'd feel better about it if resetting Sense didn't completely blow away all my home screen settings; that's lot of folders to rebuild. I'm going to try actually saving my setup in the Sense personalization app and then resetting to see if it keeps it, but I found on my OG EVO there was no guarantees those "saved" scenes would stick around in all reboot cases.

Bottom line is I shouldn't have to be resetting Sense in the first place, and hopefully HTC is taking a good look at this to see if they can eliminate it in an upcoming maintenance release.