Get Licence for the original Sony-Camera-Processing

Feature Requests
#1

For me, the camera quality is the main show-stopper to use my Jolla X10ii as a daily driver.
We all paid Sony for the hardware and software, but lose the rights to a good camera through unlocking.
Could Jolla still try - also under the aspect of a business model - to negotiate with Sony that we get the appropriate image processing as on Android: I think not only I would be willing to pay 30-50€ for a camera upgrade.
(I really regret not having had a better camera over the years, a lot of photos are of really mediocre quality, especially of my family and friends I would have really liked to have better pictures).

Request to Jolla: Can you solve the camera problem by buying a license or negotiating with Sony ?.. How much would a licence-agreement cost? / is that feasible? How many users would pay for such an upgrade (if possible)? I would!!

11 Likes
#2

I have an xa2 and i would definitely pay to have my camera quality back, so +1 from me…

1 Like
#3

I seem to recall someone saying that outside of low-light conditions we aren’t really missing out so much on the recent models. And with nothing to compare to, beyond previous devices, it seemed plausible to me.

But since you seem to be of another opinion… Would you care to share some examples so we can understand what we are missing out on?

1 Like
#4

As far as I remember image processing for the Sony camera on android was locked by keys, which are deleted when the bootloader gets unlocked. I think the phone even warned about that.
I’m not aware that there’s a way to recover those keys or to load new keys to the phone. In addition I doubt Sony’s image processing would be operating when SailfishOS is running.

IIRC there was a hack for the good old Xperia X where you could backup those keys before unlocking the phone and to restore them afterwords, but I haven’t heard that anyone used them to enhance the camera within SailfishOS.

#5

Currently the biggest issue with SFOS cameras is that it still didn’t implement Camera2API, only the legacy one. Which means a lot of features, even exposure and shutter speed are inaccessible rn. Also we don’t have access to 2 cameras on 10 III because of that. And I have a suspicion it is also causing problem with the image quality.
So getting the license from Sony is a cool idea, but there are things that need to be fixed first. Especially as Sony’s blob won’t work abywaus without full Camera2API access.

3 Likes
#6

My few cents: I would pay for this second licence, and for me the only problem seems to be the low light problem. Full access to the Camera2API surely would be fine! What other problems do exist?

1 Like
#7

All night pictures on SFOS are dark, grainy, but not blurry. That is why I guess the camera can’t decrease shutter speed enough, and that is what differs SFOS from even 3rd party camera on Android.

2 Likes