Jolla Phone Camera: Too many details are lost

[ric9k]

Edit 2:
Folks, we are saved, this camera will rock !
Test: [Stock app JPG] vs [HedgeCam2 DNG] (OpenCamera2, also does RAW)
Pictures are alive again!
Textures no more show as “re-described” but as “live captured”.
The chip stays a phone chip (imho good) but, the “normal photo feeling” is back.

But we don’t have a JP2 to make pics with an (sometimes crashy) Android app, do we?
@Jolla, pretty pretty please, give us RAW/DNG and a standard jpegization process.
The test is here below, post 58.

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Edit 1:
Jolla is aware that camera was delivered not fully tuned.
Better so, and having the phone asap, IMHO.

https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/jolla-phone-update-deliveries-started-and-other-next-steps/30730/1
I forgot this Jolla writing when posting this bug report.

But I hope the findings we make here, will serve to orient the future tweaking of the camera and serve to highlight priorities.

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REPRODUCIBILITY: 100% (always)
OSVERSION: 5.2.0.17
HARDWARE: Jolla Phone (2026) - jp2601 - jp2601 - 1.0.0.17 - aarch64
UI LANGUAGE: English (UK) (user: en_GB, os: en_GB.utf8)
REGRESSION: yes (since: n/a - n/a)

DESCRIPTION:

Too many details are lost.
The threeshold for sacrifying details is reached too quickly.
Loss is too important, in details as in colours.
Too unsaturated.

PRECONDITIONS:

Have two phones with a camera.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

1. Take a picture with gravel, grass, or wood structure, with the Jp2 and another SfOS device, to compare
2. Zoom in the pictures
3. See how zones are lost in the Jp2 pic, compared to the other one.

EXPECTED RESULTS:

Details kept as (or better than) in other Sfos devices.
Good colours

ACTUAL RESULTS:

Too many details are lost.
Too many colours are lost.

ADDONS:

• AAS Bluetooth Bridge: yes

MODIFICATIONS:

• Patchmanager: yes
• OpenRepos: yes
• Chum: yes
• Other: none specified

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Device Owner User: defaultuser
Home Encryption: enabled

Comparison:
XA2, cloudy balance, focus and light on the first left laurel bush:

JP2, cloudy balance, focus and light on the first left laurel bush:

JP2, Advanced camera, next day, 30mn later, 50Mp, (reduced to <40Mp to be able to post here) :

Thanks to @piggz for the Advanced Camera app!

Details of the above images:
XA2:

JP2:

Yellow zone: Details are lost and strangely represented. Hardly readable.
Red+Blue zones: Colours are lost

JP2, Advanced Camera:

XA2:

JP2:

JP2, Advanced Camera:

XA2:

JP2:

Leaves are very strangely and unnaturally rendered.
Flowers colours are lost.

XA2:

JP2:

Loss of colours and details.
Colour range seem too poor on the JP2.
Textures seem like repainted or interpreted.

JP2, Advanced Camera:

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the initial version of this bug report was created using Bugger 0.9.18+git1

Many thanks to @nephros for this very convenient bug reporting app :grinning_face:

[ric9k]

This said, the dynamic range and low light capabilities are much better, compared to the XA2.
The improvement potential is big as the HW is capable.
With some more love, the camera of the JP2 will be great!

[yusssufff]

Could that just be the result of the use of camera2api in the Jolla Phone, and camera1api in previous Sailfish X releases?

[attah]

I was just going to say that i’d be surprised if they use different compression.
But then i checked, and they do… but in the other direction.

So i went fishing in my collection:
JP1301 85%
Xperia X 85%
Xperia XA2 90%
Xperia 10 I, II and III 90%
JP2601 92%

So i’d not blame the compression…

[ric9k]

You are right, I can’t and am not sure of the issue source.
I’ll correct that in my post.

[noppe]

Could you take some pictures of something else, e.g. a Siemens star (printed out)? Maybe it would make the difference more obvious. (I cannot as I’m still waiting for my JP2 to arrive).

[PolatBirdal]

Honestly, this was something that had been talked about a bit from the very beginning, and I’d also like to point out that even the Xperia 10 III or the C2 can’t really capture much detail. The preview looks good, but unfortunately, even the Xperia 10 III, where SFOS works best, falls short when it comes to actual detail.

[Cryx]

I through Jolla Phone still uses Camera API 1???

[Cryx]

What I noticed with camera is that every other camera app than the SFOS stock one uses a much higher resulotion. Take a picture with stock camera and the same motive with Advanced Camera or even with AAS and Open Camera or Fossify Camera - then compare the resultion via [i] in the gallery app.

I also ask myself if the camera hardware shouldn’t be capable of recording 4K videos…

[PolatBirdal]

But what about the actual detail? Are there really noticeable differences? The Jolla J2 camera is actually using the camera from the Sony Xperia 1 IV, a flagship phone, so I think this camera should be something amazing.

[ziellos]

Your screenshots look like typical low light high ISO images with the result of heavy noise reduction. Have you ever tried in daylight?
If I understand correctly, the whole image pipeline up until the resulting JPG is defined by the camera module’s firmware, so nothing Jolla can change.
This is the reason I don’t use the cameras of my SFOS smartphones for anything other than QR code scanning…

[attah]

@PolatBirdal

But what about the actual detail? Are there really noticeable differences?

There are pictures in the first post - look for yourself.

[ric9k]

Ok, perhaps my pictures are not very illustrative.
I see what I mean because I know what I saw.
I’ll take some time today to make new pics with the Jp2 and XA2.

[PolatBirdal]

Oh, no, I wasn’t talking about the XA2 detail comparison, how much of a difference is there in the Android camera app?

[ric9k]

Ok, I edited the first post and replaced the pictures.
I think it should illustrate better now.

[ric9k]

Could be interesting but perhaps too easy for the cameras.
Anyway, I tried to print a good one, but my printer was the bottleneck and the result is not speaking very much.

[ric9k]

Hmm, I have no idea about the pipeline path…
I hope something could be dona, as for now, the quality is, IMHO, not as good as what the XA2 can produce, with the possible exception of the dynamic range.

[ric9k]

@PolatBirdal

Are there really noticeable differences?

Yes, very noticeable and pretty not really ideal.

[WeaselWily]

Today I made a comparison between the cameras of my previous iPhone 13 Pro and new Jolla Phone (JP).

The camera+app combination of JP seems to be much worse than the one found on 13 Pro (even though the 13 Pro is 5 year old camera).

I knew that the JP camera is not that good, but the results I’m getting are really weird.

It looks like the JP is doing some automatic background blurring while 13 Pro doesn’t do that. Is there a way to turn that off?

JP:

The background of the previous photo is clearly blurred. In addition, the detail in the tarmac is also missing compared to the photo taken with the 13 Pro. The focal length of the phone is so small that the whole image area should be in focus like it is with my 13 Pro.

13 Pro:

What’s going on here?

[Kanthal]

The 5 year old 13 pro has barely any difference with the 17 pros and probably with the ones that come next week as well.

If anything I am amazed with the quality of your photo knowing it’s from a sfos device.