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One of the biggest stabs at Android is its poor performance when it comes to apps that require access to the app, the likes of Instagram and Snapchat. For a long time, images posted from Android phones have always appeared inferior to those posted through an iPhone and it is not because Androids suck but rather, how the system itself functions.
To make you understand, on iPhones, apps such as Instagram and Snapchat have direct access to the camera, thus the images captured are of original quality, unlike Android, where developers prefer to do a screengrab – sort of like a screenshot of your camera’s view which in turn lowers the quality of the images captured.
See, Android is an open source software, which means, unlike iOS which only Apple has access to and thus it is available on a few devices, Android is used by various manufacturers who implement it differently which means that for a developer to access an Android’s device’s camera, they need to go through hoops which is time-consuming and thus, they prefer taking shortcuts that end up producing the “ashy snaps”.
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Google has now stepped in to solve this problem with the development of a new API dubbed CameraX. Instead of developers writing code for various phones in order to have access to the camera, the API will do the heavy lifting and all developers have to do is to plug and play different modules that they wish to have on their app and CameraX will interface directly with the stock camera app on every phone thus allowing apps like Snapchat to directly use the camera to capture images.
The API will work on phones running Android 5.0 and above, which is a huge number of devices and CameraX will enable a consistent experience across all these devices.
Such a development will not only make it easier for developers to focus on more important functions of their phones but it will also bring a lot of happiness to users who rely heavily on such apps.
It seems an end is coming for all those iPhone vs Android Snapchat jokes.
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