Device implementations SHOULD include a rear-facing camera and MAY include a front-facing camera. A rear-facing camera is a camera located on the side of the device opposite the display; that is, it images scenes on the far side of the device, like a traditional camera. A front-facing camera is a camera located on the same side of the device as the display; that is, a camera typically used to image the user, such as for video conferencing and similar applications.
If a device implementation includes at least one camera, it MUST be possible for an application to simultaneously allocate 3 RGBA_8888 bitmaps equal to the size of the images produced by the largest-resolution camera sensor on the device, while camera is open for the purpose of basic preview and still capture.
Device implementations SHOULD include a rear-facing camera. If a device implementation includes at least one rear-facing camera, it:
Device implementations MAY include a front-facing camera. If a device implementation includes at least one front-facing camera, it:
Device implementations MAY include support for an external camera that is not necessarily always connected. If a device includes support for an external camera, it:
android.hardware.camera.external
and android.hardware camera.any
.Android includes two API packages to access the camera, the newer android.hardware.camera2 API expose lower-level camera control to the app, including efficient zero-copy burst/streaming flows and per-frame controls of exposure, gain, white balance gains, color conversion, denoising, sharpening, and more.
The older API package, android.hardware.Camera, is marked as deprecated in Android 5.0 but as it should still be available for apps to use Android device implementations MUST ensure the continued support of the API as described in this section and in the Android SDK.
Device implementations MUST implement the following behaviors for the camera-related APIs, for all available cameras:
Device implementations MUST still implement the full Camera API included in the Android SDK documentation, regardless of whether the device includes hardware autofocus or other capabilities. For instance, cameras that lack autofocus MUST still call any registered android.hardware.Camera.AutoFocusCallback instances (even though this has no relevance to a non-autofocus camera.) Note that this does apply to front-facing cameras; for instance, even though most front-facing cameras do not support autofocus, the API callbacks must still be “faked” as described.
Device implementations MUST recognize and honor each parameter name defined as a constant on the android.hardware.Camera.Parameters class, if the underlying hardware supports the feature. If the device hardware does not support a feature, the API must behave as documented. Conversely, device implementations MUST NOT honor or recognize string constants passed to the android.hardware.Camera.setParameters() method other than those documented as constants on the android.hardware.Camera.Parameters. That is, device implementations MUST support all standard Camera parameters if the hardware allows, and MUST NOT support custom Camera parameter types. For instance, device implementations that support image capture using high dynamic range (HDR) imaging techniques MUST support camera parameter Camera.SCENE_MODE_HDR.
Because not all device implementations can fully support all the features of the android.hardware.camera2 API, device implementations MUST report the proper level of support with the android.info.supportedHardwareLevel property as described in the Android SDK and report the appropriate framework feature flags.
Device implementations MUST also declare its Individual camera capabilities of android.hardware.camera2 via the android.request.availableCapabilities property and declare the appropriate feature flags; a device must define the feature flag if any of its attached camera devices supports the feature.
Device implementations MUST broadcast the Camera.ACTION_NEW_PICTURE intent whenever a new picture is taken by the camera and the entry of the picture has been added to the media store.
Device implementations MUST broadcast the Camera.ACTION_NEW_VIDEO intent whenever a new video is recorded by the camera and the entry of the picture has been added to the media store.
Both front- and rear-facing cameras, if present, MUST be oriented so that the long dimension of the camera aligns with the screen’s long dimension. That is, when the device is held in the landscape orientation, cameras MUST capture images in the landscape orientation. This applies regardless of the device’s natural orientation; that is, it applies to landscape-primary devices as well as portrait-primary devices.