As more and more buyers get the brand new Google Nexus 5X smartphone, we’re starting to see a lot of complaints about minor issues here and there. Of course, many photos taken with the phone are displayed upside down. Including posts on Facebook, Instagram and other social sites. The following explains the cause of this issue and how to fix it temporarily.
On September 29, Google unveiled the impressive new Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X smartphones. Two of the latest and greatest devices running pure stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It was made to feature Google’s latest software and showcase the latest hardware. These are USB Type-C, faster charging, fingerprint scanners, better cameras and Android Pay.
At $379, Google’s Nexus 5X is an all-around excellent smartphone, and it’s such a good phone for the price that it’s been hugely popular since it went on pre-order on the 29th and shipped in mid-October. There’s a brand new and much improved 12.3-megapixel camera on the back, but many buyers find that when they take pictures, they appear on the phone upside down. Here’s why and what owners can do about it.
We didn’t have many complaints during our time with the Nexus 5X. It’s a great smartphone. The camera performs incredibly well, but the actual camera app, Google Camera, was slow at times. As a result, many owners are downloading and using 3rd party photo apps instead of the built-in Google Photos app on the phone.
Here is the problem. Google’s came out and announced Due to the sheer size of the 12.3-megapixel camera tech inside the phone and trying to fit everything into a tiny 5.2-inch device, they had to flip the camera sensor over to fit it. That, or it was just poor production, and LG didn’t take the time to make changes to get the new camera to fit properly. It’s true, believe it or not, and approved by Google themselves.
Detailed on Reddit was a post of Google’s own Eino-Ville Talvala, a lead tech for Android’s camera frame team. Here’s what he had to say.
“For manufacturing reasons we had to mount the Nexus 5X main sensor in the less common (reverse landscape) orientation otherwise the wires from the sensor chip wouldn’t fit. Unfortunately, our legacy camera API (deprecated but most apps continue to use it) It’s not very user-friendly and requires app developers to explicitly set the preview rotation. On most devices though, the default rotation turns out to be correct for a forced landscape app, so many apps never call the screen orientation method.”
What this essentially means is that Google needs to put the camera sensor to the side and then change the software to detect it, and most camera apps will automatically recognize the rotation and take the photos correctly. An update to Google Camera fixed this issue before its release date, and Google’s latest APIs for developers also made the right changes.
The second problem is many 3rd party camera apps with more features, controls, filters and editing tools than Google’s, don’t have the latest Android 6.0 changes and APIs (for developers), meaning they don’t know how to control the orientation So photos are previewed, taken and shared upside down.
Of course, quickly pressing the edit button and rotating them correctly fixes this, but doing this for every photo is extremely annoying and problematic to say the least.
This means that those using the stock Google Camera app or Instagram and many other popular apps won’t have any issues, but owners using 3rd party camera apps downloaded from Google Play will have upside down photos.
Both Google and LG have reached out to app developers who have apps on the Google Play Store to warn them of the changes. A quick software update to these apps in the Play Store will fix this and the Nexus 5X will continue to work just fine and take great photos for years to come.
The only solutions for now are to use a recently updated camera app, stick with the average Google Photos app, or wait for the developers to release updates to the camera apps with the latest software changes. This may be annoying, but end users will get a better experience and improved camera applications by having the latest changes, software, features and tools developed by Google.
