Aren't the photos on Snapchat intended to be ephemeral? I'd be totally okay with potato quality if I was sharing something quickly because Snapchat isn't a photography app.

It's not as if Snapchat are a tiny company with nobody smart enough to notice there's a camera API, this is intentional.

If you want to send a quality photo to a friend, there are apps for that.

"snapchat isn't a photography app"

you literally take photos and send it to people

Snapchat is to photography as passing notes in class is to literature

Sure, but it's a sticky note, not a novel.

> Aren't the photos on Snapchat intended to be ephemeral? I'd be totally okay with potato quality if I was sharing something quickly because Snapchat isn't a photography app.

This hasn't been the primary focus for years. You can now send Snaps that don't expire after a time limit, and can save your snaps to your storage or Snap's cloud storage (called "memories").

The non-expiring snaps still disappear when you close them; they just don’t auto-close. I guess there’s memories, but I doubt most people take photos just to put in memories.

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Snapchat (the company) defines itself as a camera company. This can be seen in their IPO and SEC filing documents. And I bet it has a lot to do with their snapchat spectacles.

I've used some pretty recent Android devices which take 1-2 seconds to focus and capture using the actual camera, so I see where he's coming from. Done > perfect when you're trying to capture something happening RIGHT now.

Hate to break it to you, but Snapchat still struggles to focus quickly. Probably because they're using the viewfinder's built-in lower resolution to perform the focus action, which further hampers its ability to focus on an object accurately

We we're doing video, so we are using Camera1 (and Camera2) where its available, but its a bad situation. Lots of obscure devices we don't have access to test on fail regularly and users blame us not Android. The API is clumsy and broken, not just difficult to use.

If I was making an app with photo taking capabilities, I would explore the Snapchat route. Obviously Snapchats users are ok with this for the most part.

This^

I have made countless cross-platform AR apps for mobile and desktop. Never an issue with WebRTC/getUserMedia, iOS, windows, etc. However Android is always a nasty problem. From incorrect aspect resolutions, image stretching, silent fails. Each device needs a custom fix which is time consuming and costly. No wonder why Snapchat went an alternative route.

Are time-consuming custom fixes still commonly required in other (not camera reliant) Android apps too? I haven't really done any Android development since I had a Galaxy phone four years ago because this problem really turned me off to making hobby apps for Android.

The camera & low-level video encoding / decoding are the most device-specific quirky in my experience. If you're making something that is just "software" it's all pretty standardized, but when you start accessing the "hardware" (video codec, camera, possibly low-level audio) is where the device specific differences catch you.

It sounds like he does understand how the API works, doesn't like the way it works, and has decided that for the scope and goals of his project, doing things the fast and low quality way meets the needs of his users.

How often is the Venn overlap of "High Quality Photo" and "OMG Selfie!" exceedingly relevant?

What kind of photo quality do you need to take a selfie to send to your BFF with cat ears drawn on?