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Droid Autofocus bug is the weirdest bug. Ever.

on November 19, 2009 – 2:45 pm3 Comments

motorola-droid_c

One of the main gripes of Motorola’s latest flagship beast is it’s problem with getting a proper auto focus with its 5 Mp shooter. This has been the case since it’s launch and it now seems, to have been magically(through a silent over-the-air update actually) to have been fixed, until the 11th of December that is.  The strange thing is that according to Dan Morrill, from Google’s Android team, the bug is related to a time-stamp bug:

According to Google Engineer Dan Morrill, there is an unfortunate bug in the Droid’s auto focus routine. It improperly rounds a timestamp used in the calculations, which somehow throws the entire focusing process off. Today it works, and tomorrow it will work…but 24.5 days from now, the bug will be back.”

Meaning to say that after the 11th December, if you do not update your droid, the camera’s autofocus will automatically go bonkers. But according to Verizon’s 5 page treatise on the Droid’s known issues, their firmware update will be coming with a permanent fix which should solve most of the droid’s software related bugs.

Still, its a little creepy in the way how the Droid got updated so silently and without the knowledge of the consumer. But for the year of 2009, were there an award for the weirdest bug, this auto-focus bug would surely win it…

Sources:

TechCrunch, Engadget


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  • Captain Jack

    I agree that it is in indeed the weirdest bug. Ever. But check your facts… there was no “silent over-the-air update”.

    The problem wasn’t fixed by an over-the-air update, it was fixed due to the renewal of the 24.5 day cycle.

  • Dr. Strangelove

    That is right Captain! There was no secret over the air update. And even if there was, who cares? How is an update an invasion of privacy? Why would you not want your system fixed? Am I missing something?

  • http://www.avacatau.com James Tavares

    It’s not that weird… 2^31 (a signed int) Is 2.1 billion… That’s about 24.8 days when measured in milliseconds. Looks like a simple rollover bug to me!