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Help Camera malfunction - Reboots when app launches

Moondoggy

Moondoggy

Newbie
I used my Droid Turbo a month ago to shoot some outdoor pictures and the camera worked great. Today, however I attempted to use the camera and the app froze and the phone rebooted. I uninstalled the built-in camera updates and reinstalled them and the result was the same - load the app and the phone reboots. I tried installing another camera app and the result was the same as the built-in camera app. Has anyone else experienced this problem and come up with a solution to make the camera work again? If so, please let me know.
 
I have not had this problem.

I suggest that you Wipe Cache Partition deleting all temporary data and not touching any permanent data or settings. It will run about 8 minutes. Then try the camera again.
If it is still a problem try running in Safe Mode ... if it works it is caused by app that you added.

... Thom
 
The last step would be to try a factory data reset. Copy all of your photos, videos, etc., from storage to a computer or online service to backup and see if a factory data reset has the same problem. If yes, I'd suspect it's a hardware failure that requires a warranty replacement. If not, it was some sort of weird data anamoly.

However, of course try the cache partition wipe and safe mode first!

One other possibility, though I'm not sure this would be it: perhaps an existing photo on storage is problematic. If cache wipe and safe mode don't help, another idea is to back up your photos and videos externally and the deleting all files from the /DCIM/camera folder before a factory reset, just to rule that out.

Good luck, I hope it's something simpler than a warranty replacement.
 
I called Motorola after I cleared the cache twice, uninstalled and reinstalled the default camera app as well as downloading another camera app and they were stumped. In the end they said that since my phone was still under warranty I should get a replacement so I went to the Verizon store this afternoon. They had never seen anything like this either so they ordered me a replacement that should be here in two days.
 
It is a new one to me also.

Please do us a favor. You are going to be giving up this particular one. As a near last thing you should do a Factory Data Reset before returning it. After you do the Factory Data Reset ... see if the camera problem was corrected ... let us know either way ... it might help someone else in the future.

... Thom
 
OK. I will tell you that today, before receiving my new phone, I restarted my Turbo in Safe Mode which still left the camera app active since it is built-in and cannot be 100% removed. After entering into safe mode I tried the camera app and almost immediately upon launch it rebooted just as it did before. Upon reboot I went in and uninstalled all of the updates to he camera app so that it was pretty much like the phone when I got it. Again I restated the phone in Safe Mode and the phone rebooted just as it had before. Once I get my new phone and perform the factory reset on the old one, I'll try the camera again however I feel pretty confident that this is probably a hardware issue. I think that I'm just fortunate that my Turbo is not that old and still under warranty. Had my old Razr not shot craps on me when it did I might have selected an S6 as I'm getting real weary of Motorola devices going down hill. My wife has a Droid Razor herself and sadly it's starting to behave in the same manner as my old Razr did before it simply quit working. Sadly, we're in a world today where no mater how good a care you take with a device, they break for no apparent reason and you have to toss it and get a new one.
 
Moondoggy said:
Once I get my new phone and perform the factory reset on the old one, I'll try the camera again however I feel pretty confident that this is probably a hardware issue.
Click to expand...

You're probably right, but I still wonder if there is a bad photo or video in storage right now that is making the camera fail for some reason. The real test will be if it happens right after a factory reset.

If I were you, though, even if it worked, I think I'd stick with the warranty replacement.
 
Well, I guess you may be right. I got my new phone yesterday and after setting the new one up and doing a factory reset, the camera worked just fine. I'm stumped not as to the cause as I assumed that Safe Mode would have taken anything like a bad photo or video in out of the picture. Since all of my photos and video's were backed up and restored this further increases the mystery. As you suggested I'm keeping the warranty replacement as it took hours to get everything back the way it was on my old phone. If you or anyone else has any further insight into what might have caused this let me know.
 
Safe mode doesn't detach from storage, so if there was a photo there (perhaps it was in the thumbnails folder?) that would not have solved the problem. I'm not convinced it's that, I was just wondering if the camera app reads the external storage to determine next photo number, etc., and there was something that was there (again, perhaps a hidden file somewhere) that messed up the app. That shouldn't happen without an error message, in my opinion. Safe mode does prevent any third party app services from starting up, so it is a good way to rule out interference with another app that may be trying to access the camera, etc.

I'm glad that it worked out either way, though.
 
Thanks for letting us know.

I had the buttons at the bottom of the screen stop responding to touch. Bi diagnosis solved anything. In preparation for an exchange I did a Factory Data Reset and they worked again ... and are still working - months later.

A complex hardware/firmware/software environment and it sometimes gets bollixed up.

... Thom
 
OK, I'll have to keep that in mind in case something happens again as I could have easily deleted all of my photo from my phone and cleared out any extraneous files in those folders during my attempt to fix this problem. If it was a file I'm assuming that it was some sort of extraneous file as VZ backed up all of my actual photos and they were restored when my new phone was activated. It's just too bad that there isn't someone that has cleverly figured out how to grab all of the settings from each application you have on your phone and save them so if and when you did a factory reset you could instantaneously restore your phone to the way it was prior to the reset. I have a Nexus tablet that has many of the same apps as my phone and when I upgraded it to
 
BTW.... I want to say thanks to Doogald and Thom for their input on this issue as I really appreciated their input and their thoughts.
 
Moondoggy said:
It's just too bad that there isn't someone that has cleverly figured out how to grab all of the settings from each application you have on your phone and save them so if and when you did a factory reset you could instantaneously restore your phone to the way it was prior to the reset.
Click to expand...
Yeah, no kidding.

There is an app called helium backup that I think could do that for apps. I'm not sure about system settings though.
 
Unfortunately, the developer of Helium pointed to a WiKi blog that said:

"Helium is NOT available to Motorola devices. This is because Motorola phones have a bug that break Android's backup mechanism. Until this is fixed by Motorola, Helium will not work on those Androids. You can download Helium manually here: http://download.clockworkmod.com/apks/Backup.apk If you find that Helium does work on your Motorola Android, please notify me."
 
I'm pretty sure that this was true for moto devices older than the Moto X - Droid Razr HD and older moto phones. The models since 2013 work fine.

I'll install again and check to see if it's still true. (I don't need an app like this myself...)
 
doogald said:
I'm pretty sure that this was true for moto devices older than the Moto X - Droid Razr HD and older moto phones. The models since 2013 work fine.

I'll install again and check to see if it's still true. (I don't need an app like this myself...)
Click to expand...
Yep, it works just fine. I backed up a game app, uninstalled it, reinstalled to show that the app had no data saved, then restored data using Helium and it restored my progress.

There are some apps it can't back up, but all of the ones that I saw like that were apps that sync or store data in the cloud anyway (Flickr, Facebook).

(Oh, by the way, this is on a 2013 Droid Maxx, but I am 100% sure that the 2014 Droid Turbo is the same.)
 
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