Related
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?
This is my second post as a new Android and Epic user. As my first post, I suggested a new name to a ROM developer here!
Alright, I have the Epic in my hands now and I am really enjoying it, especially after being on a small and not-very-user-friendly-and-slow touch screen on HTC Fuze (HTC Touch Pro) from AT&T. As I mentioned, I am new to Android and new to Epic, and I am facing the following issues, which could very well be user errors:
- I had seen several reviews on YouTube noting how good the camera on Epic was, but the pictures I have taken on Epic seem to me like they are from a 1.x megapixel camera!
I recently took a pic in a dimly lit restaurant and I was absolutely appalled by the quality of that pic. I couldn't even send it out to folks in the pic due to the low quality of the pic. The Fuze has a 3.2 megapixel camera and the pics on that phone are WAY better than the pics on the Epic with a 5 megapixel camera (I am aware megapixels are not everything, but still).
I took a few pics in my house, with more light, and the quality didn't improve at all. I couldn't find any posts related to low-quality pics on Epic. I installed Camera 360; the pics taken using 360 are 30% better than those taken with the default camera application on Epic. So, the hardware can do much better.
I was expecting the pics on the Epic to be really crisp and clear, but they are not, by miles. Am I doing something wrong?
- I changed the volume levels in "Sound and Display," but that's the only change in settings I have made. Now, I don't hear the sound that we hear after unlocking the phone by dragging the lock icon upward. What could be wrong?
- In Swype, I changed the setting to disable the haptic feedback, but enabled the tapping sounds. But I don't hear any tapping sounds when I tap on the keys. I am completely lost on this one.
- This is more of an issue due to my newness to Android and TouchWhiz. When I receive a notification about a new e-mail(s), and I click on the e-mail icon at the bottom of the screen, I see a list of all my e-mail accounts. How do I know which account received the new e-mail (out of the five accounts I have configured)?
- I have configured a default Gmail account for my Epic. I tried to send some pictures by using the "Share" feature and selecting my default Gmail account as the "sending" account. A small and short-lived pop-up said "sending message" but the "receiver" account received nothing, even after several tries. Although, I was able to send the same pics using other Gmail accounts on my phone. What could I be missing with the default Gmail account?
Sorry for such a long post, but I would really appreciate your help on the issues (or user errors) I am facing. Thanks!
P.S.: I am not planning to root my Epic just yet, as I would like to experience the phone as is for a month or so.
For the camera problem make sure you have the size set to 5 megapixels and the quality to superfine.
When you get an email slide down the notification bar and click on the alert, it will take you straight to the emails.
When I turned off the noise for selecting things on the screen it also stopped the lock screen noise.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
tatoniss said:
For the camera problem make sure you have the size set to 5 megapixels and the quality to superfine.
When you get an email slide down the notification bar and click on the alert, it will take you straight to the emails.
When I turned off the noise for selecting things on the screen it also stopped the lock screen noise.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your reply. I have already set the resolution to 5 megapixels and the quality to superfine, but the pics still are subpar.
I am aware of the sliding down the notification curtain to go to the e-mails directly, but I was wondering if there was a setting or mod to indicate which account had new e-mails.
It explains that the turning off the tab sounds for the screen would also disable any tap sounds for the unlocking screen.
I am still open to input for my other issues, if someone knows how to solve them. Thanks.
why don't u take a pic of something and post it here so we can tell u if something is wrong?
here is a pic I took few days ago with max settings, what do you think of the quality?
if the quality isn't like this, then perhaps u need a new epic. if the quality is around that, then that's how epic takes pics
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
razorseal said:
why don't u take a pic of something and post it here so we can tell u if something is wrong?
here is a pic I took few days ago with max settings, what do you think of the quality?
if the quality isn't like this, then perhaps u need a new epic. if the quality is around that, then that's how epic takes pics
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I was initially planning to take a picture and post it for other members' review, but when I posted my first post, it was around 4 a.m. in the morning, so I couldn't find enough daylight to take some pics.
I am linking to a picture I took a few minutes ago, in low sunlight. The quality of this picture of outdoors is acceptable. I am also attaching a picture that I took at a restaurant; this picture - a cropped part of the pic with no modification to the quality of the pic - is just to show how grainy and washed out the picture is.
I understand the lighting in the restaurant was low, but still, even with the flash, the quality of the image leaves a lot to be desired. I took that pic with all the default settings, meaning I had not selected the "Indoor" scene mode (I am not sure if that would have improved the picture vastly). Correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.
Edit: I just took another pic of the outdoors using Camera 360 to compare the quality of the default camera application on the Epic to that of Camera 360's. This pic is sharper than the one taken by the default camera application on the Epic.
I noticed something about the signatures for the e-mail accounts. I changed my signature on one gmail account and it changed my signature on all my gmail accounts and my Exchange account. Shouldn't I be able to change the signatures individually?
For camera quality: are u tapping the screen and letting the little box turn green to focus?
Sent from my Epic 4G
ravizzle said:
For camera quality: are u tapping the screen and letting the little box turn green to focus?
Sent from my Epic 4G
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I am focusing before taking pictures. I got my phone swapped today and the new one's camera looks better. Although, how true is the notion that installation of apps can slow down the phone (quite natural) and this can affect the quality of the pictures because of the delay?
incisivekeith said:
Yes, I am focusing before taking pictures. I got my phone swapped today and the new one's camera looks better. Although, how true is the notion that installation of apps can slow down the phone (quite natural) and this can affect the quality of the pictures because of the delay?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not true at all. If u have many process intensive apps running I can see some some lag, but just installation of apps won't do anything.
Sent from my Epic 4G
ravizzle said:
Not true at all. If u have many process intensive apps running I can see some some lag, but just installation of apps won't do anything.
Sent from my Epic 4G
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is what I thought. It doesn't fit that the lag on the phone can actually reduce the quality of the pictures taken by the camera.
On another note, I have imported contacts to my phone via a vCard file. I also have a default Gmail account configured on my phone. Can I sync the contacts on my phone with the Gmail account? And, can I sync contacts from my phone with Outlook Express or Outlook on my PC? I have been reading a lot of opinions on this, but none has had a definitive answer.
To sync the contacts stored on the phone to your gmail account, first you need to export your phones contacts to your sd card, then you import them right back in, but when given the choice, choose to import them to gmail account (all done through Settings->More->Import/Export, even if you already know some future reader may not )
When you have accomplished this, you will have multiple entries for each of your contacts, so you will want to go and either go to Settings->Display and deselect either the phone or gmail contacts, but I would suggest hiding the gmail, then deleting the (now duplicate) ones stored on the phone, then of course unhiding the gmail contacts. If you somehow delete one that didnt get uploaded to google properly or something, at least you already have a full backup on your sd card that you can reimport.
[Q] A few questions about and issues with the Epic from a new Android user
Koadic said:
To sync the contacts stored on the phone to your gmail account, first you need to export your phones contacts to your sd card, then you import them right back in, but when given the choice, choose to import them to gmail account (all done through Settings->More->Import/Export, even if you already know some future reader may not )
When you have accomplished this, you will have multiple entries for each of your contacts, so you will want to go and either go to Settings->Display and deselect either the phone or gmail contacts, but I would suggest hiding the gmail, then deleting the (now duplicate) ones stored on the phone, then of course unhiding the gmail contacts. If you somehow delete one that didn't get uploaded to google properly or something, at least you already have a full backup on your sd card that you can reimport.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your response. I haven't had the time to apply the workaround for the contacts, but I will certainly post the result here.
On another note, I was wondering about the following:
- Why doesn't the voice activated action take place automatically? When I say a voice command, instead of just performing the command, the device pops up a list of options (including an exact match of my voice command) matching my voice command. If I am required to select what I want to do from the pop-up list, what's the purpose of the voice commands?
Edit: The above functionality works that way, it seems.
- My battery indicator (and GPS Status app) shows the batter level at 97% when I receive a message on the device that the battery is full. How come? I read about this on the forum, but didn't find a solution or the cause for this. And interestingly, if I keep the phone plugged in a little longer, the indicator shows a charge of 100%, but as soon as I unplug the phone, it reverts to 97%.
I miss little things on Stock Android on the Epic such as the option to see the duration of calls. Shouldn't Stock Android (not the apps) have widgets similar to those on the Today Screen in Windows Mobile?
Any thoughts from the community? Thanks.
Edit: I just found out the the in-line controls for the headset for the Epic don't work reliably at all. I am not able to end a call when the screen is off. A couple of days ago, I was at least able to press the in-line control button and bring up Call Log on the phone; I am not able to do that today. Also, is it true that the in-line mic is faulty, too? I found some comments regarding the in-line controls and issues similar to mine in these threads (thread1, thread2), but no solution. Why are such basic functionality missing from such a good phone? Is there a solution to this?
I would appreciate some input on the issues I am facing, either saying there is no solution to some of them, or point me in the right direction. Thanks.
i get the same charging thing it will only charge to 97%. i bought two extra batteries and also came with an external battery charger, if i charge with the external charger and pop in the batteries they show 100% so it must be the phone isnt charging it to 100.
As far as the charging goes, I find that if I have it plugged into a lower power charger, like charging from a usb port on my computer, sometimes it will charge all the way to 100% and stay there when unplugged. Otherwise, I can get my phone to charge to 100% if I have the screen on full brightness while charging. I dont know if it is because it stops charging when it reaches a certain voltage or what, and if the screen is drawing power while charging, it isnt getting charged as fast, so it wont 'trip' the sensor saying the battery has a full charge as soon because the power draw keeping the voltage a little lower. Of course this is just speculation on my part.
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.
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+
I send a picture taken from s7 edge to my friend from messenger. The quality looks so scaled down. like you cant see some pixels. is this normal?
It only looks bad to you, if you send it. Phone reduces image in preview because you have full photo in gallery. Receiver sees full resolution.
Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
Both messenger and Viber are compressing the photos and then they look crap on the other phone . Only way to get the full resolution photo is maybe sharing via G.Drive , so the other person can download the full image . That is my experience as always photos look really bad on the other phone when received via viber or messenger - crappy quality in compare with the real image
Messenger distorts the quality of your picture. Maybe you can send thru email.