[EVO 4G Android Development] NxNW:
I'm back with more blather about the camera.

First can I make a big disclaimer up front, that basically we need to remember the glass is half full here, and the camera that comes with Synergy works perfectly fine for what cameras actually need to do ie TAKING PICTURES OF THINGS.

Yes, I was once a little annoyed to discover fake menu selections that don't do anything and I duly noted it here, but by continuing to report my findings on this tangent I don't want to undercut the real takeaway, and that is THE CAMERA WORKS.

A lot of people see a 2,000 word post with the word "camera" in the first line and conclude "the camera must have issues". It doesn't. Or if it does, those issues are minor and cosmetic: in the world of porting apps from one phone to another, a couple orphaned menu items is more a question of poor style than anything else.

Ok, with that out of the way, I tested the camera that comes with Synergy (version 3.00.000.042190.531) on a different ROM (admittedly, a Synergy variant) and it behaves the same way, ie, certain "Effects" can be selected but they don't do anything.

So this whole thing is not a Synergy issue per se and at some point I will need to open up a new thread over in "General" and keep this thread free of non-Synergy-specific noise.

My apologies.

This post is basically over now.

But if you want more details, feel free to keep going.

As for HDR, honestly, I've gone back and forth on this a few times, but I'm prepared to say HDR is one of the effects that doesn't do anything, or at least anything useful. If it does *anything* (as one of my tests seemed to indicate), it's not true HDR whatever it is.

(In my slapdash research on the topic, I've learned there's a whole world of HDR people who will tell you that "ProHDR Camera" by Eyeapps does true HDR, whereas "HDR Camera+" by Almalence or "Camera 360" by mappn provide only "fake" HDR. Sad to say I'm convinced the stock Sense 3.0 camera must fall into the latter category. )

By the way the ROM I did the test on, "Kingdom Synergy" came with a different version of the HTC camera, 3.00.000.029209.1400 .

I noticed it worked almost the same as the one above except any non-working features seemed to have been removed altogether.

Also, there was no dedicated "Effects" menu item (I'm not sure the capacitive menu button did anything at all - I forget) - effects could only be selected by touching the onscreen wand icon and going from there.

Here are the effects that were included in this other stripped down version (all worked fine, even sepia) :

no effect

grayscale

sepia

negative

solarize

posterize

aqua

Three final notes:

1) In the version that comes with Synergy RLS1, I also did a brief test today on all the other settings *besides* "effects", and they all seem to do pretty well. I struggled a little with trying to change ISO because it seems no matter what I choose, the automatic exposure decision-making software puts me right back where I started by the time I take the picture. But I'm sure there's some 'pilot error' involved somewhere.

2) There is a whole thread about a HTC camera apk that has panorama etc. (see http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1084195 ) In fact the version number reported by that camera is identical to the one that ships with Synergy RLS1, and the same menu selections fail in the same ways. With that said, the app itself doesn't actually function the same. The UI behaves a little different (different icons for similar functions, for instance) and it includes one more effect, Burst, which in fact manages to fail in a way that is even worse than "placebo effect", it actually force-closes. Fail.

3) Sad to say the MIUI camera, which is excellent, does not seem to run on Sense. Once again today's Good and Evo ran a link to a software package posted by ropodope on vaelek's site, (just like yesterday - see themed Swype discussion), only today it's the MIUI camera. MIUI is an AOSP rom so I didn't have high hopes, but just in case, I tried downloading it, and it promptly FC'ed on launch. I have experimented with this camera in the past (on both CM7 and of course MIUI itself) and it gets a lot of things right. The screen shot on goodandevo had a very intriguing icon, "Anti-shake", which I'd love to see in HTC's own camera someday..