7.5. Cameras

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.

7.5.1. Rear-Facing Camera

Device implementations SHOULD include a rear-facing camera. If a device implementation includes at least one rear-facing camera, it:

  • MUST report the feature flag android.hardware.camera and android.hardware.camera.any.
  • MUST have a resolution of at least 2 megapixels.
  • SHOULD have either hardware auto-focus or software auto-focus implemented in the camera driver (transparent to application software).
  • MAY have fixed-focus or EDOF (extended depth of field) hardware.
  • MAY include a flash. If the Camera includes a flash, the flash lamp MUST NOT be lit while an android.hardware.Camera.PreviewCallback instance has been registered on a Camera preview surface, unless the application has explicitly enabled the flash by enabling the FLASH_MODE_AUTO or FLASH_MODE_ON attributes of a Camera.Parameters object. Note that this constraint does not apply to the device’s built-in system camera application, but only to third-party applications using Camera.PreviewCallback.

7.5.2. Front-Facing Camera

Device implementations MAY include a front-facing camera. If a device implementation includes at least one front-facing camera, it:

  • MUST report the feature flag android.hardware.camera.any and android.hardware.camera.front.
  • MUST have a resolution of at least VGA (640x480 pixels).
  • MUST NOT use a front-facing camera as the default for the Camera API. The camera API in Android has specific support for front-facing cameras and device implementations MUST NOT configure the API to to treat a front-facing camera as the default rear-facing camera, even if it is the only camera on the device.
  • MAY include features (such as auto-focus, flash, etc.) available to rear-facing cameras as described in section 7.5.1.
  • MUST horizontally reflect (i.e. mirror) the stream displayed by an app in a CameraPreview, as follows:
    • If the device implementation is capable of being rotated by user (such as automatically via an accelerometer or manually via user input), the camera preview MUST be mirrored horizontally relative to the device’s current orientation.
    • If the current application has explicitly requested that the Camera display be rotated via a call to the android.hardware.Camera.setDisplayOrientation() method, the camera preview MUST be mirrored horizontally relative to the orientation specified by the application.
    • Otherwise, the preview MUST be mirrored along the device’s default horizontal axis.
  • MUST mirror the image displayed by the postview in the same manner as the camera preview image stream. If the device implementation does not support postview, this requirement obviously does not apply.
  • MUST NOT mirror the final captured still image or video streams returned to application callbacks or committed to media storage.

7.5.3. External Camera

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:

  • MUST declare the platform feature flag android.hardware.camera.external and android.hardware camera.any.
  • MAY support multiple cameras.
  • MUST support USB Video Class (UVC 1.0 or higher) if the external camera connects through the USB port.
  • SHOULD support video compressions such as MJPEG to enable transfer of high-quality unencoded streams (i.e. raw or independently compressed picture streams).
  • MAY support camera-based video encoding. If supported, a simultaneous unencoded / MJPEG stream (QVGA or greater resolution) MUST be accessible to the device implementation.

7.5.4. Camera API Behavior

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:

  • If an application has never called android.hardware.Camera.Parameters.setPreviewFormat(int), then the device MUST use android.hardware.PixelFormat.YCbCr_420_SP for preview data provided to application callbacks.
  • If an application registers an android.hardware.Camera.PreviewCallback instance and the system calls the onPreviewFrame() method when the preview format is YCbCr_420_SP, the data in the byte[] passed into onPreviewFrame() must further be in the NV21 encoding format. That is, NV21 MUST be the default.
  • For android.hardware.Camera, device implementations MUST support the YV12 format (as denoted by the android.graphics.ImageFormat.YV12 constant) for camera previews for both front- and rear-facing cameras. (The hardware video encoder and camera may use any native pixel format, but the device implementation MUST support conversion to YV12.)
  • For android.hardware.camera2, device implementations must support the android.hardware.ImageFormat.YUV_420_888 and android.hardware.ImageFormat.JPEG formats as outputs through the android.media.ImageReader API.

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.

7.5.5. Camera Orientation

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.