Motorola DROID’s Autofocus Woes Change with the Moons
So, a lot of Motorola (NYSE: MOT) droid owners haven’t been too happy with the 5 megapixel camera’s autofocus. In fact, it’s the single biggest complaint about the Android handset to date. All of a sudden, many have been reporting a drastic improvement in the camera, and attributing a silent over-the-air update, but as it turns out, the bug actually had a built-in (but unexpected) fix. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Engineer Dan Morrill explains:
There’s a rounding-error bug in the camera driver’s autofocus routine (which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly on a 24.5-day cycle. That is, it’ll work for 24.5 days, then have poor performance for 24.5 days, then work again.The 17th is the start of a new “works correctly” cycle, so the devices will be fine for a while. A permanent fix is in the works.
Like some demented techno-werewolf, the autofocus on the droid will go feral in another 24.5 days, unless you manually set the date back to the clean period. Weirdest. Bug. Ever.
