The phone's camera is confusing for others

[Snareman]

I just got back from a group hiking vacation. People would randomly hand people their phones and ask them to take pics of them. While I'm well versed with how the camera works, wear to press, how to adjust metering, etc, it is completely unintuitive for the average person (and would be fore me if I didn't own the phone) and resulted in some horrible pics. One person got 10 pictures of her foot before getting one of me. No one can tell where to press to take the pic and certainly can't adjust the lighting. The iPhone by comparison, which I got to try a bunch of times taking people's pics, was far more straightforward. It recognizes faces and puts a box around them and there is an obvious shutter button.

I often find myself using A Better Camera when I hand the phone to people because its more straight forward, but it then takes 5sec to process the pic so the person never has a clue whether they actually took a picture or not.

Anyone else have this experience?

 

[LeoRex]

Oh, Motorola's camera app... yeah, I have never been a big fan of how they go about things. In the interest of making things 'easier', they use UI elements that kind of go against the grain. Nearly everyone goes with a traditional "viewfinder + shutter button" layout that uses tap to focus. So if you stray from that, chances are that someone coming into the phone cold, like the 'man on the street', is going to fumble about a bit.

My kids have Motos... and every time I've had a need to use those cameras, I always burn a couple of shots before I remember.

 

[doogald]

When you hand people the phone tell them that your phone is different, that they take pictures by pressing a volume button and that they shouldn't touch the screen at all. Or just use Google Camera or another camera app. Don't worry about lighting - use a photo editor to alter the photo later, or set it to HDR always.

I think Moto should allow people to choose a default camera app that launches with the twist gesture. I also think that Motorola has for years had poor camera apps.

Basically, I agree with what you say.