Database Users

Contact Picture Quality

I'm probably not the first to 'complain' about this... but I thought I'd put it all together in one post and see if anyone was having the same issues, or same results...
So...
Trying to 'Sync' Facebook contact pics with my x10 contact pics - tried a few apps, and while most of them did the job to some degree, with varying results, but mainly the same level of disappointment, one thing I found with all of them was that the resolution was abysmal to say the least...
I found also that if I opened Facebook, I could view any of my own profile pics, and I was given the option to assign them to a contact – great (sort of) providing the only people I know are myself. Friends pictures were ‘locked’ such that the assign to contact option did not exist - silly, really.
Now, while fiddling with my phone, I discovered that the some of the Facebook contact syncing apps actually downloaded a full quality pic to my device – perfect – now let me see if I can open them and assign them to a contact... nope, no luck – interestingly, they were ‘locked’ just like they were when I opened them through Facebook – no option to assign them to a contact.
Now, I move them to another folder (one which had pics that I could assign) and all of a sudden, they were unlocked... funniest thing was that pics left in the original folder I took them from were also unlocked... odd... good too, but odd.
So happily assigning all these full definition contact pics, I then had a look at them, and the resolution was again abysmal... WTF...! Anyway, one last go, and instead of going via the picture to assign it to a contact, I went through the contact then assigned a picture to it... Success...! this time proper resolution...!
So from this I assume that going through the picture, or any syncing apps, you’re only getting a contact pic as good a quality as the Android system expects. However, if you go through the contact, the x10 is getting a contact pic at the full quality it knows it needs to display...
Anyway, take what you will from this, but I thought it was interesting...

same over here, the pictures I assigned to my contacts are very high quality and they all look like sh#t on the phone when some one calls me.
It is full of noise and extremely blurry. Really don't understand why...They can't be made this for such a low quality so I assume we do something wrong, but I can't figure it out. Do we need very big resolution pictures to get them proper on this phone? But thanks for the tip, working the other way around does work good, but it keeps being strange...
Cheers.
Arnold

Consider that a phone call needs to pop-up right away. Why waste the processing speed to show a full resolution image?
Note: I think an update that went around to some regions cleaned up the resolution a bit.

iead1 said:
Consider that a phone call needs to pop-up right away. Why waste the processing speed to show a full resolution image?
Note: I think an update that went around to some regions cleaned up the resolution a bit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not the brazilian update.

I'm willing to swear that it's a donut issue... mainly because going the Android way in is ugly, and the SE way in is on the money...
You'll also notice the Android way gives you a square pic, and the SE way gives you an elongated pic to fit with their interface...
iead1 said:
Consider that a phone call needs to pop-up right away. Why waste the processing speed to show a full resolution image?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed that it might be low res for this reason, but the x10 can handle the hi res just as good - and considering the contact pics are so large, you definitely want them full res.
Hopefully SE do some updates to improve this... Hopefully...

k1sr said:
You'll also notice the Android way gives you a square pic, and the SE way gives you an elongated pic to fit with their interface...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Problem is, I don't wan't the elongated pic or the square pic.
With WinMo I could put any pic format.
Why should I be restricted in Android?

Only 2 questions I couldn't find the answer to...

I came from an HD2, and what HTC wrote over in WinMo 6.5 I thought was great, especially the gallery app, which cleared up an image when you zoomed in. I've noticed that this phone does not do that. When I zoom in on a picture I took it just turns all fuzzy, like it's been compressed or something. I know the pics are high res cause they look great on my computer, but I just can't understand why they don't clear up when you zoom in. Anyone else experience this? The only other issue I've noticed is that every once in a while I'll open an app up, lets say the web browser, and it pops up and then just force closes. Several others I know with a Vibrant/Captivate are having this problem as well, and I was just curious if anyone knew the cause. I'm totally new to Android so please pardon me if these are dumb questions.

for the second half of your post you should get your phone replaced.
there have been a couple people on here that had that issue with "sticking" buttons so apps would randomly close or settings would popup.

As for your first issue, it sounds to me as though you are zooming into the thumbnail version of the picture. Perhaps the full high-res version is actually found in another pile/folder under the gallery. I don't think the thumbnails are generally viewable separately, though I do see a lot of other media gathered up from various apps which can be kinda annoying.

No I promise I'm not zooming on the thumbnails, I'm clicking the folder with all of my pictures in it, and it'll let me zoom in on them, but they never clear up. It's not the camera cause the resolution is right, just the zooming isn't working properly. it's weird, and frustrating.

I definitely don't have the camera problem. I tested it with photos I took as well as wallpapers in my gallery. I assume you are using the gallery app, right?
If you're getting FCs on stock apps you may want to just do a factory data reset (settings/privacy). It happens occasionally to all android phones and the only sure fix I've seen is a reset. Make sure you're not using task killers or home replacement apps (pandahome, openhome, etc) as they can cause a lot of FCs in my experience.

You might have your camera resolution on lowest settings. Try a higher setting and let us know. The default resolution is 640x480.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

Checked the resolution of the camera and the pictures themselved and they're both 5MP, so I really don't know what the problem is now. It is rather frustrating though, when I zoom I want to see the details of the image not a fuzzy picture. Another thing I've just had happen to me is trying to copy over a 4.5GB MKV file at 720p I got the message "The file 'Up' is too large for the destination file system" I don't get that cause I have 6GB free on the phone and 6GB free on the 16GB micro SD. My phone hates me :'(

the 4.5gb MKV isn't a Samsung issue. It's a filesystem issue, relating to the default filesystem used on the sd card memory. FAT32 has a file size limit of 4gb.
It might seem a bit frustrating that you will have to re-encode that huge MKV, but considering that you can count on the fingers of one hand the smartphones that would even be able to smoothly play the video in that container in the first place, it's a small price to pay.

I know the phone could play it, it chews through my 720p copies of Top Gear without so much as a hiccup, and they're nearly the same bit-rate. I think you're right about counting the phones that could do that though because my HD2 didn't have a chance. I didn't know fat32 had a file size limit though, that's very useful information and thank you very much for that. Any ideas on the gallery app problem?
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

I had/have a HD2, and now a Vibrant that I am using.
I know what you are talking about with the pictures looking pixelated on the Vibrant when you zoom in, but look fine on the HD2. I too, would like a solution to this. Maybe another app does this.

I know exactly what you're talking about and it really is quite annoying. As if losing the flash wasn't bad enough, now even my old photos look bad on it. I've figured out firstly that the stock android gallery app has a 16 bit limit but that's not the issue I'd imagine. What I believe to be the culprit is that, as far as I can tell, what the image viewer does is it actually automatically downsizes all your photos which would explain the pictures' butchered quality. Of course it's just a theory but it seems to check out. Unfortunately I have yet to find a decent replacement app or a solution thus far. And not to dash your hopes but I hear the problem also exists in froyo. Kinda disheartening for such an awesome multimedia phone.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App with swype

+1.. I also know what you mean, I had the HD2 and zooming in on the pictures on this phone sucks!. I am sure there is an image viewer somewhere that would work well

Yes! Glad to hear I'm not the only one with this issue. I was beginning to think I was alone! I am by no means a developer, but I think it's probably the scaling algorithim, though it would be interesting to check it out on another phone running 2.1. Next time I activate a Captivate at work I'll check that as well, it'd be really weird if that one worked correctly!!

I've figured something out. When you look at photos in the actual camera app, and zoom in that viewer, the pictures look fine, it's only in the actual gallery app where the zoom doesn't work properly...

I definetly do not have the issue with zooming in on pictures (camera or gallery) and I have yet to have a FC on any app. You mentioned the browser, any other apps FC'ing on you?
Have you done anything (other than root if you have)?
Are you using a TK?
Can you give more details?

I know what you mean by zooming the pics. Try image viewer, its awesome and zooms in great
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

Well it's only the browser that's done it, and it's only happened once to me, so I'm really not worried about that one. A power cycle took care of it right then and there. As for the zooming, like I said in the camera app itself it works fine, but in the gallery app it's not too good. I'm not rooted (yet), and I have no task killer because I've heard more bad things than good things about those. Idk how else to describe the problem, it just seems like when I zoom in it's like the file is a very low resolution and gets very pixelated and when I check the properties I know it's a 5MP picture, so idk what's going on.

Something I never noticed so I just tested and you're right!
It's the way the built in gallery app works. It creates a thumbnail of all images and that's what it displays. You can even see the thumbnail images if you explore the phone memory. The only way around it is to download and use a different image viewer.

I suggest large image viewer! It is a bit spartan in terms of features and ui but it has the best image viewing of all the apps I tried! Btw the default image viewer basically makes a lower res bitmap of all your pictures and it's impossible (I think) to actually view the original images from within the gallery app. Why it would do this? I have no clue, seems like poor programming to me. Perhaps it's the cost we pay for the nifty though relatively pointless 3d effects.
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant using the XDA app. You may thank Swype for any and all grammar errors.

[Q] Photo Resolution

I no longer have the Samsung Focus but I keep monitoring these forums just in case I change my mind in the future.
While I had the phone I noticed that even though I had set the camera to 5 megapixel, the pictures I emailed, manually uploaded to SkyDrive or the ones that the phone automatically uploaded to SkyDrive camera roll were all severely lowered in resolution. The dimensions of these photos were reduced to 719x539. I never tried syncing the phone to my laptop via the Zune software.
I do not recall seeing anywhere a setting that would account for this severe drop in resolution. I know that when sending photos via MMS they need to be reduced in size, but I am not talking MMS.
Why were all these photos reduced in resolution? Did I miss something in setting up the phone?

It is done so to save your cell data usage. From what I hear, there should be an option to upload full-res phone but never tried.

foxbat121 said:
It is done so to save your cell data usage. From what I hear, there should be an option to upload full-res phone but never tried.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If that is so, nice to see that whoever decided this thinks about the consumer, but ultimately the choice should be yours not Microsoft's. Let the user take advantage of that 5 megapixel camera. Not much different than Microsoft's decision to not support hidden WiFi networks and the lame reasoning behind that.
If there is a setting to allow full res uploads, great. I haven't seen it though, but of course it wouldn't be the first time I overlooked something. But I did look for it and could not find it. If this setting is available thru one of the diagnostics codes, that is not acceptable.
Most likely using Zune would allow full resolution. I just never go to trying it. But even so, personally I want to be as much self sufficient as I can without constantly needing a laptop or desktop.

Think of this way: photos uploaded to the cloud are intended to be used by web viewing. Full-res 5MP photo is just a waste of time and resource in this intended purpose. I think Microsoft did the right decision here. As with most of the features in WP7, they are what they are for the practical usage of that feature for majority of the consumers without the need to tweak it. Most ppl today has a limited data plan, it won't be too many pictures before they use up their 2GB data cap or worse, 200MB. Remember once the upload feature is turned on, it will automatically upload every picture you take. Imagine you forget that and used up all your data caps in a day when you take loads photos for your kid.

[Q] Camera and SD Card

Sup, ppl?
Hey, I have a new X8 phone (3 weeks old) and I have a major issue with my camera from day 1!!! It's all glitchy and blurry, with wrong lighting and i can't take pictures at all. Sometimes when I repair the update with PC Companion or SEUS it gets to work again, but after using the phone for some time, it bugs again, especially after playing Angry Birds (even for just once!!!). I have never rooted my phone, it's all original.
I had it repaired by the service center, they said they just ran a software update (and I had the latest version) and I don't know how all my apps were still on the phone (I never manage to do this, everytime I repair the update I lose all my apps, how can I keep them?). I searched the web for several hours and haven't found anyone with my problem. I have posted question on SE support forums and on their Facebook page, but no one seems to help me. I think I'm having this unit replaced.
Another thing is that I formatted my SD card, and I thought I could get the original content again, but I was wrong. I had the "music" folder backed up, but I don't have the "media" folder. I lost some of the alarms (like the "multi alarm" one) and the notifications. Can someone upload the media folder for me please?
Thanks for all the help.

Felipe MacLeod said:
Sup, ppl?
I have a major issue with my camera from day 1!!! It's all glitchy and blurry, with wrong lighting and i can't take pictures at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What did u mean blurry? Maybe this phone does no come with an auto focus camera that why when you take picture will blur. Correct me if i'm wrong.

It's not exactly blurry, but it look horrible. For example if you edit a picture and you start messing with hue, saturation or color balance. The more you mess, the worse it gets. The display shows an bad colored looking picture and taking pictures does not work. Tried searching everywhere but can't find anyone with similar problem.

Can you post some photos? The best would be if you could put the phone fg on a table and take a photo without moving it at all. Cause to me it looks like either the camera itself is the issue or something wrong with software, if you're saying that when you mess with settings it gets even worse.

owiec said:
Can you post some photos? The best would be if you could put the phone fg on a table and take a photo without moving it at all. Cause to me it looks like either the camera itself is the issue or something wrong with software, if you're saying that when you mess with settings it gets even worse.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not that I can mess with the settings, the camera app doesn't have ANY settings to mess. The messing with settings exampled I used was about using a photo editor and try messing with the color levels or hue/saturation of any picture. My camera is displaying a screwed up image as if there was some color filter applied to it, someting that would react really poorly to lighting. Just like if you picked up a 16 million color picture with many gray colors (variant colors) and you converted it to like 256 colors, it would look really poor. That's the image my camera shows.

And did you try others apps for camera? Maybe there's something wrong with it. If not - go for warranty

owiec said:
And did you try others apps for camera? Maybe there's something wrong with it. If not - go for warranty
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It happens to any camera app.
I'm an IT guy and I know sometimes unexplainable things happen with hardware/software. Today when I woke up, when I was going to put the phone in the pocket for leaving home, it slipped and fell to the ground scattering parts all over (cover and battery). After rassembling it i thought: "Wtf? I'll try the camera!". And believe or not: it was working PERFECTLY. And is perfect to this very moment. Some problems just don't have a reasonable explanation.

Original SD Content
Now the only missing piece is the original SD content, which I happened to wipe out unadvertedly. I tried some undelete tools, but none found the data, and I probably already overwrote all the data with many backups that I made.
So, if anyone could be very kind to post me the media folder contents (with the alarms and everything) and also the pictures that came in the images folder I guess?
Thanks, ppl.

-snip-
shutup-----

Photos uploaded to Facebook are DOWNSIZED - please help?

I can't believe I am the only one having this problem, as I am now onto my second S4, and this new one also has the same problem, and my friend's S4, on a different Network, also does exactly the same...
The issue is, if I shoot a photo on my new Galaxy S4 in full 13Mp resolution, this produces an actual image on my device, that is 4128 x 3096 in resolution, with a File size of around 4.7MB As soon as I share it to Facebook however, either by clicking the Android Share link on the image and choosing "Facebook" as the destination, OR by using the Facebook App direct then choosing an image to upload, then I end up with a problem...
The image that actually arrives on Facebook, is heavily compressed with noise, and is resized down to just 1032 x 774 resolution, and a tiny file size of 178 KB (instead of the 4.7 MB masterpiece it actually was).
It does this with EVERY image I shoot - 100% of the time. And worse, is I mix things up a little, if I first REDUCE the resolution of my camera BEFORE taking a shot, if I drop it down to 8MP and take a photo, then despite the image now being a SMALLER photo, the image that arrives at Facebook is then BIGGER than those shot at 13MP, arriving at 1632 x 1224 instead.
Go figure...
But I suspect it's a bug in Facebook. However, given that my guess is that it affects 100% of S4 users, 100% of the time, I can't believe there are not thousands of discussions and debates about this issue... I can't find ANY discussion, for an issue that is there for ALL users, ALL of the time...
Please note also - whilst I am aware that there were high quality image upload issues on the S4 with Instagram too, this has been fixed in part, through an Instagram update. In my case, the photos that are resized down when uploaded to Facebook, are nevertheless perfectly correct and of the true size and quality when uploaded to any other Android Share location, or Social Networking Site, such as Google+ etc. It is only when sent to Facebook that the images are instead massively compressed, degraded, and down-sized.
So can anyone tell me - is this a known issue, for which the cause has been identified..? Or were none of you aware of this yourselves? If so, can you test it, as it's repeatable 100% here, on various S4's on various networks...
Take a photo on the phone in FULL RESOLUTION. Uploaded it to Facebook using the android sharing function on the S4. Then go to Facebook on a desktop PC and locate the photo you just added. Choose the option to download it to your PC, and save it. Examine the downloaded image, and identify if it is a true 13Mp image, or if for you too, the image has been uploaded at just 1032 x 774
And if that is the case, I'm amazed much more has not been made of this issue. I got the S4 because it has such an amazing camera, and I love uploading photos. Alas, as it stands, the device is useless, as it uploads my images to Facebook at a resolution and quality, lower than that of my first ever 1.2MP standalone Digital Camera of 1998...
Comments or ideas anyone?

Shadamehr said:
I can't believe I am the only one having this problem, as I am now onto my second S4, and this new one also has the same problem, and my friend's S4, on a different Network, also does exactly the same...
The issue is, if I shoot a photo on my new Galaxy S4 in full 13Mp resolution, this produces an actual image on my device, that is 4128 x 3096 in resolution, with a File size of around 4.7MB As soon as I share it to Facebook however, either by clicking the Android Share link on the image and choosing "Facebook" as the destination, OR by using the Facebook App direct then choosing an image to upload, then I end up with a problem...
The image that actually arrives on Facebook, is heavily compressed with noise, and is resized down to just 1032 x 774 resolution, and a tiny file size of 178 KB (instead of the 4.7 MB masterpiece it actually was).
It does this with EVERY image I shoot - 100% of the time. And worse, is I mix things up a little, if I first REDUCE the resolution of my camera BEFORE taking a shot, if I drop it down to 8MP and take a photo, then despite the image now being a SMALLER photo, the image that arrives at Facebook is then BIGGER than those shot at 13MP, arriving at 1632 x 1224 instead.
Go figure...
But I suspect it's a bug in Facebook. However, given that my guess is that it affects 100% of S4 users, 100% of the time, I can't believe there are not thousands of discussions and debates about this issue... I can't find ANY discussion, for an issue that is there for ALL users, ALL of the time...
Please note also - whilst I am aware that there were high quality image upload issues on the S4 with Instagram too, this has been fixed in part, through an Instagram update. In my case, the photos that are resized down when uploaded to Facebook, are nevertheless perfectly correct and of the true size and quality when uploaded to any other Android Share location, or Social Networking Site, such as Google+ etc. It is only when sent to Facebook that the images are instead massively compressed, degraded, and down-sized.
So can anyone tell me - is this a known issue, for which the cause has been identified..? Or were none of you aware of this yourselves? If so, can you test it, as it's repeatable 100% here, on various S4's on various networks...
Take a photo on the phone in FULL RESOLUTION. Uploaded it to Facebook using the android sharing function on the S4. Then go to Facebook on a desktop PC and locate the photo you just added. Choose the option to download it to your PC, and save it. Examine the downloaded image, and identify if it is a true 13Mp image, or if for you too, the image has been uploaded at just 1032 x 774
And if that is the case, I'm amazed much more has not been made of this issue. I got the S4 because it has such an amazing camera, and I love uploading photos. Alas, as it stands, the device is useless, as it uploads my images to Facebook at a resolution and quality, lower than that of my first ever 1.2MP standalone Digital Camera of 1998...
Comments or ideas anyone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I asked the same question in this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2256054
Haven't really gotten an answer yet. For now, i use an image resizer app, resize it to the dimensions of 3789 x 2131 .. and then upload to facebook... that ensures the maximum size gets uploaded to facebook. There doesnt seem to be a workaround for this until facebook updates the way its app uploads photos.

I noticed the exact same thing when going from an HTC One S to the S4 and I posted on another thread asking the same question. It's driving me crazy. Pretty sure it's the FB app and not the S4.

I was searching for a different matter regarding the fact that the Facebook app forces you to upload the pictures using a square shape instead of the original photo shape. I recently switched from iOS to Android and found myself with this annoying feature. iOS-version of FB app allows you to upload pictures without having to crop them into a square. Weird. --> Don't ask me how, but this is fixed now. No more square-shaped pictures.
Then again, I tried to by-pass this issue by uploading the picture through the mobile-version of the site/web app and found myself with this pop-up from Chrome.
"Unable to complete previous operation due low memory". Found this thread ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2101893 ) but the solution given is not exactly what I'm looking for. I wish to know why is this message popping up and what am I supposed to do.
Going back to the subject... I experienced the same thing when I uploaded a picture to my timeline (no cropping issue there). Resize is done in a way that messes up the whole picture with the compression.
I'm assuming they've built an algorithm that resizes the pictures to prevent people from uploading +4MB files, data usage... I don't know.
Is there any solution to any of my issues? thank you!
If it matters --> Samsung Galaxy S4 (GT-I9505) - No SD card.

Also my problem with my octa s4.
I wonder why my friend's samsung duos mobile uploads are fullsized, while my s4's uploads are pixelated and so low quality.
For now I'm using Nokia 808 Pureview for my mobile upload but android do have vast application choices for editing photos before upload so I'm really annoyed by this.

Sorry to resurrect this but I'm having the same problem and couldn't find a fix

fransarj said:
Sorry to resurrect this but I'm having the same problem and couldn't find a fix
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe it's just Facebook doing the automatic downsizing.

dratsablive said:
Maybe it's just Facebook doing the automatic downsizing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're not having this problem?
If I use the mobile browser to upload, or a 3rd party app, it uploads in high resolution.

fransarj said:
You're not having this problem?
If I use the mobile browser to upload, or a 3rd party app, it uploads in high resolution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know, my pictures seem fine when using the Facebook app.

Oh man I never noticed this till today!
I'm using a Note 3 and it downsides the pictures to 1000*xxx... what? That's like a 4x downsize... why???
Is there any fix (except uploading pix from the PC?)

its 2015 and the problem still exists! i think i'm movin to g+