Android camera phones have a big problem. It’s not something that users will face frequently — it’s actually pretty rare — but when it occurs, it’ll totally ruin your photos.
I’m not talking about all the Google Pixel camera features you’re not using because they’re too well hidden.
Neither do I mean how fragile the camera bar is, which the Pixel 10a solved, or how, until recently, Instagram couldn’t use the full power of your camera.
Over the last year, I’ve lost multiple potentially great pictures to the same annoying bug.
This has happened across multiple Android smartphones I’ve tested, and it’s not an issue with the individual mobile: it’s all down to how camera phones work.
How I lost several photographs
Goodbye, waterfall pictures
I’d come up against the problem several times, but the first time I really noticed it and tried to fix it was at the tail end of last year, while I was testing the Nothing Phone 3.
I was on holiday, and asked my partner to take a picture of me before a waterfall we’d passed.
She did so, handed me the phone, and showed me the photo. It was just what I wanted: me pulling a silly face by a beautiful waterfall.
But then I pressed the image preview in the corner of the camera app, and was faced with a completely different photo.
It was a similar framing, but out of focus and with me halfway through standing up. It was from a few seconds after my partner pressed the shutter, as I’d begun walking back towards her.
Gone was the nice picture we’d framed and she’d taken. All I had to show was this weird, blurry snap.
I spent ages digging around in the settings menu, trying to find a way to revert the picture, but there was no way. I lost the picture.
I wrote this article because, several days ago, the same thing happened while I was using a Realme phone.
I was trying out a new running trail near my house, and wanted to send a picture of it to my partner.
I passed a picturesque vista of the canal I was following lit up by the sun, so I took a photo without stopping my run.
You can guess what happened here.
When I tried to send the picture, I discovered my phone had saved a snapshot of a few seconds later, when I had lowered my device to keep running.
Instead of a scenic overlook, I had a snap of a dirt trail.
The most offensive thing is that, while my phone didn’t save the good picture, I could still see it in the preview field of the camera app (you can see it below, followed by the picture I got when I pressed the icon).
I had a several-pixel-big reminder of what could be, but when I pressed it, I was faced with a dirt trail.
Why this bug keeps happening
A camera feature is to blame
I know I’m not the only person who’s faced this problem. While talking to friends and peers, I met other people who’ve had to contend with it.
As far as I can tell, the culprit is a core part of the smartphone experience.
When you press the shutter on your phone’s camera, it doesn’t capture a single image; it takes a burst of multiple.
It then combines them into one photo, using elements of the lighting, exposure, and white balance from all of them to inform the result.
This process is called Multi-shot processing, and it’s slightly different from the Burst mode that most camera phones offer, which works similarly but delivers each individual frame to pick between.
In theory, it’s a useful way to capture a balanced image quickly, but that’s only when it works.
Only shooting in Burst mode is a workaround, but it’ll fill your phone’s memory quickly.
When the error occurred in my testing, it was because the subject or photographer had moved while the images were still being captured, and then the phone made a poor choice about which frame to use as the “main” one.
Apparently, Android phones can see a well-framed, in-focus shot, and think, “nope, I’d rather pick the weird, out-of-focus one.”
In theory, the fix is simple: keep the phone still while you’re taking a picture, so you don’t move too much.
But when the issue has occurred, the phone (or subject) has always been still for a reasonable amount of time. It’s not human error, but something on the phone’s side.
Google needs to give us a fix, or a reprieve
At the moment, there’s no way back
Software is going to have issues — nothing is perfect all the time. So, I could forgive the annoying multi-shot processing problem … if there was a way to retrieve the lost pictures.
But at the time of writing, neither Android nor the Google Camera app allows you to see the pictures captured in the burst if the phone erroneously picks the wrong one as the ‘main’ snap. So your picture is lost for good.
Since software problems are hard to totally remove, Google really needs to introduce a way to see these alternative pictures, and pick the right one.
At the moment, this pervasive problem has literally no fix beyond avoidance or using alternative camera modes, and I’m sick of losing pictures I’d like because of an annoying software flaw.
Some hidden camera tricks stop you from missing the moment, so it’s frustrating when a built-in problem makes mistakes for you.
