Snapchat "takes a picture" by just grabbing a frame from the viewfinder instead of, you know, using the proper API.

This could have made sense back when Android imaging situation was more of a mess, but the current API obviates the need for this.

It definitely made sense because Snapchat is only used for ephemeral photos, and taking a "proper" photo is extremely slow on many Android phones (or at least it was until recently).

That said they should have just implemented both solutions and let the user pick.

It's likely just a case of "it it ain't broken, there's no budget"

It is pretty broken though, since the image looks terrible because it skips a lot of the image processing steps.

A pretty good summary: https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/snapchat-upgraded-its-a...