910631 - [Flashlight] Need to define the behavior of flashlight

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia::Camera, defect)

Description

[William Hsu [:whsu]]

* Description:
  This case is dig out from Bug 906627.
  We found the if a device equip with a flash light, the flashlight behavior is inconsistent between different FxOS devices. For example, Leo device will automatically turn off the flashlight after pressing the home button. But the helix device will not automatically turn off the flashlight after pressing the home button. Furthermore, if you recall the camera app from card view, all devices' behavior are not the same. Some devices will automatically turn on the flashlight but other devices will not.
  
  So, I think we need to define the flash light behavior as possible as we can because many FxOS devices have equipped with a flashlight.

Comment 1

[Stephany Wilkes]

This is not a blocker for leo/1.1 or koi/1.2. It is an important issue, as we recently saw in Colombia research where users want to take photos at night, but the camera flash is a feature on the UX priority list for 1.3.

Comment 2

[William Hsu [:whsu]]

Hi, Wayne,

As Stephany mentioned, the feature of camera flash is listed in v1.3 scope.
But the Leo and Helix had built-in flashlight.
Do you think we should treat camera flash related issue as known issue or we should have a workaround solution?

Comment 3

[Wayne Chang [:wchang]]

I would recommend we review the UX here as soon as possible as camera flash light really is a basic feature nowadays.

Flagging product on this. For v1.1 and v1.2 without having detailed defined specs I would suggest we at least switch the flashlight off when user leaves the camera app.

Comment 4

[Preeti Raghunath(:Preeti)]

Minus on this bug.

will not be fixed for v1.1

Comment 5

[Peter Dolanjski [:pdol]]

I believe this is being planned as part of the media backlog.  Sri to confirm.

Comment 6

[Sri Kasetti]

Yes, this is one of the target features for camera in 1.3

Comment 7

[Wilson Page [:wilsonpage]]

Is this still an issue? If not, can we close?

Comment 8

[William Hsu [:whsu]]

I only see one user story which relates to camera flash.
- Bug 925215 - [Media] [Camera][User Story] Add flash to the camera
Needinfo Marcia for more information.

----------------------------------------------------------
Hi, Marcia,

Could I have your help?
Have we already improved the behaviors of camera flash on V1.3 branch?
Thanks.

Comment 9

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

William: I wasn't able to find any definitive stories relating to 1.3 that relate specifically to the behavior of the flash.

My expectation is on devices that I have the flash button that the setting would be preserved when I minimize the app in card view or when I hit the home button. I compared this to behavior on my android device, and from what I can see it preserves the flash state even when I exit the app.

Specifically for 1.3 if we think this is important than we should clarify which devices are shipping and whether we think the behavior is different on those devices. Adding ni on Sri to clarify this point - should the behavior be the same on all shipping devices?

Comment 10

[Sri Kasetti]

Adding wilson
Not sure if this was done in 1.3 but while refactoring camera code,
I remember discussing preserved states of certain features in camera.
Flash on camera is one such feature...

Did anyone test this again on helix device?

Comment 11

[Wilson Page [:wilsonpage]]

I still don't fully understand what the issue is here. I think the original bug refers to the fact that the video 'torch' flash remains on after pressing the home button.

I have just tested, the normal behaviour is for the flash to turn off once the camera is 'released'. This *does* happen for the Helix, but after a longer delay (~9secs) than other devices (~2secs). This indicates that something is different at the hardware level. 

I'm getting the impression that the Helix device is slowly becoming unsupported due to the state of graphics and lack of urgency around quite critical bugs. For example: video recording is currently broken for Helix and from what I've seen, no one seems to really care.

Comment 12

[Diego Marcos [:dmarcos]]

This bug seems to affect only Helix devices and the time that the torch mode remains on is due to hardware differences. Please reopen if this issue affect devices other than Helix. I tried with Flame and Nexus 4 and both present reasonable behavior: A couple of seconds to turn the flash off. Even my iPhone 5 takes almost a couple of seconds to switch the flash off after exiting the camera while recording video.