yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Xperia Z3 General] AlexusJ:
I have owned the Z3 for some time, sending it back now for a full refund (thankfully I bought it from a reputable store with GREAT customer support and return policies). I also do not get paid by any agency/company (not by Sony, not by anyone else) to promote certain products on internet. I agree with many points of that review. The speakers do SUCK on this smartphone - their volume sucks for both "regular" calls (without using speakerphone) and for listening to music/watching videos, they sound pretty "hollow" regardless of EQ settings, there's noticeable "static" noise (especially during calls), etc. I went through 2 NEW phones, so it's not a "rare occurrence". HTC One models do have much, MUCH better speakers (I had original HTC One, "M7" model). Hell, even the single "mono" speaker on my spare Moto X sounded better (more "loud", no distortions or static noise, plenty of bass without making whole phone vibrate).

And yes, the camera on Z3 is actually INCONSISTENT on "intelligent auto" setting (plenty of blurred details and poor exposure/white balance), as confirmed by MANY actual owners (see the picture quality thread) and by many reviews on sites like PhoneArena and others - you can get around that by using manual mode but owners should NEVER be FORCED to do that, and it is even more disappointing considering that "intelligent auto" works GREAT on most of Sony's stand-alone "point & shoot" cameras.

I disagree about software stability, though - I never had it automatically reboot even once or notice any lag or any crashes with any apps, either with stock launcher or using Nova launcher. I also like the design and features of Sony's calendar and dialer apps.
[Xperia Z3 General] hanime:
Agreed with you. The issue with the speakers for me is not the volume, but the crackling sound when at max volume. Turning it down one notch fixes it, but the volume becomes too darn low. Camera is decent for me--I was hoping it was better and had better image stabilization. Same here, software is very good--no issues with rebooting or overheating. I use Nova Launcher to get it close to stock Android look as possible.
[Xperia Z3 General] dspcap:
I can't find an Android camera that compares to the iPhone 6 and it really pisses me off. I did a side by side comparison with the s5 and it wasn't close. My wife owns the iPhone 6 and sister the s5. I think the g3 may come closer. Was hoping this phone could compete, but after the last several posts, maybe not. Thanks guys and gals! I have the m8 and love it, but the camera is awful.
[Xperia Z3 General] doministry:
Just use Z3 in Manual and you'll see iPhone 6 is actually miles behind Z3 or even Note 4.
[Xperia Z3 General] dspcap:
Thanks, what does manual entail?
[Xperia Z3 General] doministry:
Well, everything is better: contrast, colour, white balance etc.

And of course 20mpx resolution.

You basically CONTROL the stuff.

Full auto is in general quite hit & miss thing.

It's not that good on Sony phones, however it works well on QX10 for instance (Sony photo lens for smartphones).

It often misses right settings, I also experienced that it gives not such great results in worse conditions.

Manual can give you actually amazing results. You can find it on flickr, there are some groups devoted to Xperia photos and I am there as well ;)

Auto is for people shooting random stuff for social networks. Sufficient to post a selfie or some other instant stuff.

Manual is the only way for any nice photography, unless you have no time to make adjustments.

The first example of control which can change the WHOLE result when you have it manual - light metering :)
[Xperia Z3 General] tweker:
The problem with the camera is the size of the lense/ccd. I have a Canon 10 megapixel and it takes **** pictures. Someday I would like to own the Pentax D745 it's only seven g,s without a lens. I'm happy with the pictures this takes its not a pentax D745 but it aint 7 G's either
[Xperia Z3 General] batousan:
Z3 owner here, I don't agree with that, simply because the manual mode cannot be launched by default, the interface is clunky and the Z3 is still massively let down by its jpeg processing and noise reduction (which gives you less noise but cartoony detail), the focus is not always great even if you attempt to tell it where to focus it can be quite off.

Yes there is only exposure adjustment in iOS8 native app but third-party camera apps offer Exposure compensation, Manual exposure, Manual focus, Manual white balance and also Bracketed capture since apple opened up more options for developers.

I use a Nikon D7000 DSLR in my spare time when I take "proper photos" the iphone was a very passable backup for when I don't have it. The facts don't lie, I take significantly less photos on my Z3 than I did with my iPhone 4S. Heres to hoping Andriod L will improve the camera app and also allow raw capture (please!!!) as this will allow me to bypass sony's awful processing and noise reduction!
[Xperia Z3 General] doministry:
Sorry, bullcr..p. Manual is launched by default by the widget on the homescreen, just like 4 other modes you can choose to be

launched by this widget.

As for the processing, I say again - learn the camera.

Judging the performance by Auto mode is really stupid from a smartphone user, who needs a quality images not just random shots.
[Xperia Z3 General] batousan:
I've never used the widget, I cannot launch this from the lock screen right?

"As for the processing, I say again - learn the camera."

Erm do you understand what I'm referring to here? You cannot alter the processing applied when you take a photo, I'm not talking about color temperature and exposure which are set based on your camera settings. What I'm referring to here is that when the image is shot, the camera will process the image to add blacks, contrast, brightness, noise reduction, sharpening to the raw image data captured and then render the file to a compressed JPEG.

You would understand this if you used a dslr or camera that shoots raw and processed (think of it as digital version of a darkroom) the image with your own settings in a program like Adobe Lightroom. For example:

https://flic.kr/p/dLxUFM

My issue with the Z3 phone is the shots, despite having a higher resolution, have less detail and more aggressive jpg noise reduction and poor colour representation when processed. I'm not looking for anything extra ordinary just at least comparable to apples offering please :)
[Xperia Z3 General] doministry:
From the lockscreen you get full auto, form the widget anything you want.

That makes the access to your camera much more diverse.

You won't tell me that accessing the camera from the homescreen is too difficult would you?

As for the processing - yes I know what you mean.

THAT'S why I tell you, again and again, LEARN THE CAMERA.

Because VARIOUS different settings AND modes on this phone give COMPLETELY different results regardin all the main aspects of the photo.

It's a very advanced camera. When treated properly beats the funny iPhone down, in 3 seconds. iPhone is just a class lower.

But it requires knowledge.

What is annoying is your mixed info giving very inconsistent approach.

You have a problem learning the camera in your pocket but you talk about RAW images?

Wht do you need RAW if you have no clue here...

You just repeat things you read probably.

Sometimes you have to dig deeper. Not everything in this world is so snapchat like ;)
[Xperia Z3 General] jonmorris:
There are many scene modes on the Z3 and they do make a big difference to how the image is post-processed, but it's somewhat annoying that there's no published explanation of what the exact parameters are.

Even those who aren't so keen on truly manual controls (if not the Sony camera app, any of the plug-ins or third party camera apps) can probably benefit by selecting a scene mode over letting the automatic mode select. Sony made a big thing of 12,800 ISO on the Z3 in its marketing, but did it say that you can't get that from automatic mode? (Or at least not as far as I can tell). I think the only way to get that is to use the High sensitivity scene.

I'd accept Joe Public won't know half of what's on offer and how to get the best results, but I would expect people contributing to this thread would have learned a lot by now and stop saying the camera is crap.

Auto does however work pretty brilliantly in excellent light (and I mean excellent light). It is usually quite good at detecting the scene, the problem being that some of the settings for the scenes it detects still result in an awful result.

The problem with Sony is that for years (and I mean years, going back to the Xperia S and arguably even the Sony Ericsson models before like the arc and arc S) they seem to fail to offer a decent camera app, or one that doesn't get anywhere near the full potential from the image sensor. Yet rivals using the same sensors do so much better.

Why is that? Why hasn't Sony looked at the code from the likes of LG and Samsung and worked out where it's going wrong? For a company that keeps saying 'the best of Sony', you often find that the average user too scared to get his or hands dirty by experimenting with manual settings or third party apps, will get the best of Sony from a phone other than a Sony!
[Xperia Z3 General] abhinav.tella:
Problem is majority of people just want a point and shoot unit, they expect not to have to mess around for each type of setting which is very understandable. The "Auto" feature is important for that very reason, the general public will judge a phone camera by that. Its definitely a good camera but let down by bad software optimization. Few people like us will actually mess around or want to mess around with manual settings. I hope Sony improves the software side of the camera but my hopes aren't high.
[Xperia Z3 General] youwonder:
I think someone got mad after they dropped their phone and shattered it (as the reviewer admits).

Yes, it has some software glitches, "It's a sony thing™". they're not showstoppers and are rare enough to not really affect my impression of the phone.

"superior auto" is kinda meh but not a bad camera mode, with manual adjustments the shooter is amazing.

as for messing with the stock google look I'll agree there was no point, but it's hardly worth deducting any review points over especially seeing as how most of it can be undone with a new launcher.

I'd say this is a 8/10 phone at worst. 5/10 is rediculous.
[Xperia Z3 General] batousan:
Wow, this is just getting irritating now, I'm not sure if english is not your first language, you are simply not getting my point or missed my earlier points. You keep telling me to... "learn the camera" and "it requires knowledge" I've been an amateur photographer for quite a few years now specialising in automotive photography, I have far more knowledge than you give me credit for heres an example of one of my images:

WEC_ELMS-57 by batousan, on Flickr

This was taken using a 4x ND filter, shutter priority at 1/40 which gave an aperture of f/8.0 thus allowing me to pan shot and give the sense of speed in the image and keep adequate sharpness and detail, ISO is at the lowest for obvious reasons (I have enough light with that shutter and want low noise) all shot in RAW. I then processed this image in Adobe lightroom with my own settings to give the desired look.

Let me get this straight, I am not expecting this from a phone camera, the sensor is simply not capable of producing such quality.

Now look, the Z3 is not an advanced camera at all, it maybe more advanced in standard form than a native iphone camera but it's still really quite a basic camera with a few adjustments, in manual mode you get ISO, exposure compensation (EV+/-), white balance and 4 metering modes to change. This is fine for getting the exposure and metering required for the shot and also the scene depending on what natural light is present, this is basic stuff for anyone into photography.

The "Scene modes" are very simple (and crude) options you will find on most compact cameras and entry level DSLR camera's not something I would be interested in using and should not be needed if you have manual control and a basic understanding of photography. Yes these will offer different results as the camera is doing it all for you, maybe you will get better colour profiles but I simply want fast, consistent results.

My point is, with all this taken into account the jpeg profile embedded into the image at the time of capture (in my view) is not very good and adds far too much noise reduction masking which removes both detail and gives a bit of a cartoony look. Its not nice.

Also, all this manual control does not make it better for its intended purpose. A phone is for quick, cheap, split second reaction to something you see. If I have the time to adjust your exposure and iso in sony's un-intuitive and still get the photo I will use my DSLR, not my phone.

When treated properly beats the funny iPhone down, in 3 seconds. iPhone is just a class lower.

But it requires knowledge.

I love my Z3 over the iphone in many ways, the camera is simply not one of them, and it isn't because I do not know what I'm doing, thats my last bit of back and forth with you on the matter as with comments like "Sometimes you have to dig deeper. Not everything in this world is so snapchat like ;)" you're just starting to insult my intelligence!

^ This here is spot on and what I'm failing to get across, the camera is good the software and processing fail to do the image sensor they have used any justice.
[Xperia Z3 General] doministry:
Well. Nobody wants to insult anybody here, at least it's not my aim.

And I'm sure my english is good enough for anybody to understand what I'm saying.

Great shot, I love motor racing as well BTW.

What I'm saying is that, first of all, comparing DSLR to the smartphone camera doesn't make too much sense.

That's obvious and I'm not trying to convince anybody that it's the other way around.

I just refer to the smartphone field. And in this PARTICULAR field yes, Sony camera it quite advanced and gives many options.

For me it's very intuitive and logical, so it's very personal.

Looking at photos from many different smartphones I see Sony cameras producing one of the best results.

I also take many shots and with all the limitations - the results can be still very impressive.

But again it's very obvious you won't get like REALLY consistent results from any smartphone.
[Xperia Z3 General] styxter:
Biggest issue there is auto mode of all z series had a problem on software. They need to fixed this as soon as possible. Cause its been two years and sony is always behind of lg, htc and samsung in android department for camera department . Now with emerging competitors such as xiaomi, oppo, huawei and others.
[Upgrading, Modifying and Unlocking] rubosam2005:
i want to upgrade my rom which one is the best.

? and i have problem with battery it doesnt last more than 12 hr? pls help.
[Upgrading, Modifying and Unlocking] bbobeckyj:
a quick Google tells me that v1640 is the universal, so try posting in that forum, however, try reading the forum first and find out what others are saying. ROM preferences are very different for each person. 12 hours does sound low though, but you don't help yourself, and as you will notice if you hang around here long enough, if you don't put any effort in, most people won't bother trying to help (after all this is other people and their time not your network provider/phone retailer support) what ROM are you on, what software do you use, have you done obvious things such as set the power and backlight settings
[Upgrading, Modifying and Unlocking] rubosam2005:
rom version 1.30.93 wwe

extrom version 1.30.194 wwe

protocol version 42.37.p8

pls help i fedup by recharge my device every 8 - 12 hr, and many complicated device. thanks
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dmarmstr:
I just set my Mother-in-law up with a new Nexus 5 updated to Lollipop. She had an existing gmail account that we used to sign in at the phone setup. However, when opening the Play Store, I notice that none of the preinstalled apps (Gmail, Calendar, etc) show up in My Apps. However, searching for these apps in the Play Store show they're installed and give the option to Update them. Do I really need to do this one by one for each app for an account that has never used Android? After updating an app, then it shows up in my apps, but it seems like a giant waste of time to have to sync them with my account.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ConorCX:
That really doesn't seem right.. I'd try a simple factory reset first and see if it works then.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dmarmstr:
Actually confirmed this with another account too (never had signed into Android before). Guess maybe the easier thing to do might be do it through the web link to Play store.
[Nexus 6 Android Development] privatekey:
Didn't work... I see the option for "Pulse Notification Light" and it's enabled but it doesn't light up when I try to text myself and receive the message with the screen off.

1. There is no config.xml.

2. I modified the bools in bools.xml and the color in colors.xml (no modification needed for colors).
[Nexus 6 Android Development] brianmay27:
Hey so I tried by baking it into my AOSP build. ( config_multiColorBatteryLed is not in the XSD so i did not include that) Nothing so far. Good thought! Im going to keep looking, at least I was able to add allow All Rotation to my build :).
[Nexus 6 Android Development] XorZone:
There is no ledtrig heartbeat trigger included and stock kernel does not support loading modules
[Nexus 6 Android Development] jamesadalpiaz:
Well to put simply, it's the method that causes the LED's to flash like a heartbeat. (From what I can remember).

ie. OFF - - - ON OFF ON OFF - - - ON OFF ON OFF (so on and so forth).
[Nexus 6 Android Development] XorZone:
The way Linux led works in nutshell as i understand it from my quick research is either setting brightness level manually (slow and unreoiable, better to be done at low level) or setting max brightness and setting appropriate trigger kernel module, e.g. set trigger to none to disable or mmc0 to blink to indicate card write activity and so on, ledtrig_heartbeat used to pulse the led and it is not an option in our triggers in nexus 6 (not in kernel) and without modules support we can not load it.

So just enabling led string would not be enough to get pulse notifications. Waiting for custom kernels.

Take a look http://fabiobaltieri.com/2011/09/21/linux-led-subsystem/
[Nexus 6 Android Development] Xileforce:
So, its working for me. What I did was just used light flow. I enabled root mode, then I enabled run every command as root, then I enabled direct mode. Then I had to choose the correct led for it to use in the other menu and when I ran the test it came on.
[Nexus 6 Android Development] thejron:
I believe the goal here is to have led notifications natively, without an app running in the background constantly.
[Nexus 6 Android Development] Xileforce:
Roger that, sorry wasn't sure, figured I would share just to be safe :P
[Nexus 6 Android Development] polaric:
The source is available, why not just compile a kernel with module support?
[Nexus 6 Android Development] garyd9:
Random mutterings...

Note: I don't have a personal build environment set up at the moment, so it's really difficult for me to check these things properly.

# should already be set

CONFIG_LEDS_QPNP=y

CONFIG_LEDS_TRIGGERS=y

CONFIG_LEDS_TRIGGER_DEFAULT_ON=y

Using these, it's already possible to, for example, activate a charging LED. (echo battery-charging-or-full > /sys/class/leds/charging/trigger) Where is the kernel support for those charging related triggers? Not finding it in drivers/leds/trigger, but it might be specific to a charging chip? No build environment means no grepping code for the strings...

# not set, but why not? does QPNP not support it?

#CONFIG_LEDS_TRIGGER_TIMER is not set

A "timer" trigger is one of the methods to create a blinking LED. (not heartbeat) the ONESHOT might also be useful. FYI, the heartbeat trigger is documented in the kernel as:

How are the triggers configured for hammerhead or perhaps for a motoX device, and how is that different from shamu? As well as kernel support, there needs to be liblights.so support for the kernel parameters, JNI support, and JAVA support. Some or all of these might already exist. Not sure yet.

The "three" LED's (red/green/blue) in shamu are configured as GPIO devices (see apq8084-shamu.dtsi.) In leds-qpnp.c, blink_store(), an ID of 8 (GPIO) will result in an error. Does that matter? If they are GPIO devices, why not configure them with leds-gpio instead of leds-qpnp?

In contrast, the "charging" LED in shamu (defined in apq8084-moto-common.dtsi, I think) appears to set up differently (MPP?) and should support blink types (that does work, actually.)

...

Why is the "charging" LED handled so differently from the 3 color LED? If I'm going to mess with the LED's, I'm going to get them blinking the way they should, dammit.

What is the disconnect between the kernel (which, at the very least, supports a charging LED properly) and the rest of android? It's been several years (i9300 -- galaxy S3?) since I've messed with the LED code in android...
[Nexus 6 Android Development] garyd9:
Odd: there's no source for liblights.so in the shamu code device tree (just a compiled lib), but there IS source for liblights for other platforms (if there's any lib at all.) Not sure I've ever seen the LED stuff being considered a proprietary blob (especially when it's kernel driven and the kernel source is all intact.)
[Nexus 6 Android Development] garyd9:
You know your losing your mind when you start excessively replying to yourself in forum threads. It's worse when you have to re-learn something you were very familiar with just a few years ago.

android notification system uses LightsService for various LED related stuff. (This includes the screen lighting.) LightsService relies on some jni code (com_android_server_lights_LightsService.cpp) to interface to the liblights library. The JNI module is tiny, and really doesn't need to be mucked with. However, it's a really nice place to put logging code. ;) The JNI only has three methods: init_native(), finalize_native(), and setLight_native().

The init is called for each type of LED "device". they are backlight, keyboard, buttons, battery, notifications, attention, bluetooth and wifi. Add logging code here to see which ones are returning a valid pointer, and which ones aren't. (I'm guessing that only backlight is being returned. I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not, then lights.shamu.so will have to be re-written from scratch to support the other device types.)

The only other interesting place will be in setLightnative(). This takes a crapload of parameters, which are all packed down to a light device pointer and a "state" structure. These are passed to the native (lights.shamu.so) code for processing. Adding logging here might be useful. It also might not be (depending on if the damn light initializes or not.)

Why does this all seem so damn familiar to me? (because I've done it before and managed to forget most of it.) (hopefully, by typing all this, I'll be able to find it again in the future via google searches.)
[Nexus 6 Android Development] garyd9:
I was getting bored, so figured I'd reply to myself. Again.

It appears that lights.shamu.so is the base of the problem. (There might be other issues, of course, but one of the ways to dig these things out is to start at the lowest level and work your way up...)

Kernel: has support

sysfs supports (if somewhat limited)

The next layer is liblights.so (or, in this case, lights.shamu.so.) The ONLY "light" that this lib seems to support is "backlight." The following all give errors: "keyboard", "buttons", "battery", "notifications", "attention", "bluetooth" and "wifi"

I am curious what the "battery" light type is. Is that designed to be the charging LED, or have some other purpose within android? Will need to check that out...

Anyway, I'll whip up a "lights.shamu.so" replacement and see what happens with that..