Rear camera stopped working?

[acoppens 45]

Has anyone experienced the rear camera (and flashlight) just quitting?
I did drop it the other day but the camera was still working afterwards. Then without any notice it just stopped working; the flashlight tile in the quick settings is also greyed out :(. 

If anyone has any thoughts on how to figure out whether this is a hardware or a software issue I'll be much obliged.
I've already tried re-flashing lineage os test build 11 (in case it was a bug of some sort), but to no avail. (I was just getting around to making this my daily driver :()
Next stop I will probably go back to stock to see if that does anything.

I tried opening it up to check if perhaps the camera module had maybe popped loose or something, but gave up. I've dis- and re-assembled my fair share of phones over the past.... decade and a half or so, but man these devices are getting tightly put to together. Even with the disassembly guide I found elsewhere on the forum this is definitely not an exercise for the faint of heart - I seriously hope I won't ever need to go beyond replacing the display assembly. The connector for the finger print sensor was particularly finnicky, could've used a baby human/octopus hybrid (4 tiny-fingered hands and for suction-cupped tentacles please) for that. Even with a pair of tweezers it was particularly unnerving; small connector, ribbon cable that was shorter than the one in the disassembly guide in a pretty tight spot next to the battery. The disassembly guide warned to not forget undoing this connector when taking the bottom half apart. In my case the case was settled so snugly that it came loose all of a sudden, ripping off/disconnecting the fingerprint sensor - luckily nothing was broken - I merely had a minor stroke.

After I got this far I still couldn't really see much wobble or looseness around the camera so with further layers of disassembly to go I decided not to push my luck and my nerves any further. 

I am unsure about putting the stickers back over the screws, they are marked here and there from removing them, and if you ask me it doesn't actually look half bad with the screws exposed. (If you like that aesthetic, which I do)

@John Veness and @altwouss I've had a bit off rattle and wobble, particularly around the right hing and more or less depending on the angle. I'd seen the discussion but couldn't remember if this had been an issue from the start. To my mind it was solid when I unboxed it and it got wobbly as some of my friends tried to open it in ways it was definitely not designed to be opened. Anyhow, as I was reassembling the display assembly I made sure to tighten the screws in the upper half a bit more, which has taken care of any wobble I had. It is now solid as a rock.

 

[cinaeco 10]

My camera and flashlight stopped working as well while I was on Lineage. I reflashed both lineage and stock, but it made no difference. I wasn't brave enough to try to open the device though 😄 I've contacted support about having it repaired.

[acoppens 45]

@cinaeco your response was the one I was sort of expecting, but hoping to avoid.

Anyhow..I'm now back on stock and the camera is still not working :(, so I guess it's time to open a support ticket.
Interestingly enough the flashlight does work on stock. I was expecting it to not work like it didn't on lineage....

Edited May 31, 2020 by acoppens
post was incomplete when first posted

[DieBruine 397]

My camera also stopped working. I had problems from the get-go. After I installed multiple camera apps y problems got worse. I was unable to take pictures from within a Hangouts conversation. 
A couple of months later my camera stopped working at all. I started the camera app and it closed right away. In another camera app, don't remember which one, the camera would no t start and there was no video/picture. Just a blank/grey  screen if I recall correctly.

So, I uninstalled all camera apps, to no avail. After that I performed a hard reset. Which did not help the first time. The second time I performed the hard-reset the camera started working. I'm pretty sure I mentioned this in a couple of topics.
In other words, yes my camera also stopped working once.

[Slion 1,200]

Sounds like you guys all have something in common: you were running Lineage OS and/or using third party camera app when it stopped working.

[acoppens 45]

6 hours ago, Slion said:

Sounds like you guys all have something in common: you were running Lineage OS and/or using third party camera app when it stopped working.

@Slion that would seem to be a common thread.
I just don't understand why the issue would persist after completely reverting to stock using the fastboot method posted by @Waxberry.

To my mind that should undo pretty much all changes that LOS might make given that most if not all partitions were overwritten include what looks to be device config, system and vendor partitions.

I tried the factory restore tool by @tdm, but unfortunately got unspecified errors. Perhaps @Waxberry or @tdm could shed some light/insights on how or why this issue would persist. Is it possible that some of the LOS changes somehow (soft or hard)brick the camera module at a deeper level?

I'm willing to get some logcats or something if someone can tell me what to do - this might also be useful for the support ticket I've opened. I've been wondering myself whether the camera is just completely dead/unresponsive or perhaps gives some sort of invalid response. But I don't know of any way to check the status of the camera at the hardware level from android.
 

 

PS: My support ticket id is 5056. @cinaeco what is your ticket id? Then I can tell support to check if there is a similar issue/solution there.

 

Edited June 2, 2020 by acoppens
Again pressed enter before post was finished....

[acoppens 45]

@DieBruine what do you mean by hard-reset?
Factory rest from android, factory reset from bootloader, .... ?

'm willing to do as many hard-resets as required (and humanly feasible say ...<10? <20?)  to get it working without having to send my device back or away 😛 and waiting for it to come back

[Slion 1,200]

23 minutes ago, acoppens said:

Is it possible that some of the LOS changes somehow (soft or hard)brick the camera module at a deeper level?

My thought exactly.

[tdm 2,322]

3 hours ago, acoppens said:

@Slion that would seem to be a common thread.
I just don't understand why the issue would persist after completely reverting to stock using the fastboot method posted by @Waxberry.

To my mind that should undo pretty much all changes that LOS might make given that most if not all partitions were overwritten include what looks to be device config, system and vendor partitions.

 

Yes, Lineage only writes to a couple of partitions.  Mainly boot, vendor, and system.  You can return to stock by writing these three partitions from the stock firmware and doing a factory reset.

 

3 hours ago, acoppens said:

I tried the factory restore tool by @tdm, but unfortunately got unspecified errors.

 

EDL can be very picky about both hardware and timing.  I'd stick with the fastboot method to restore.

 

3 hours ago, acoppens said:

Perhaps @Waxberry or @tdm could shed some light/insights on how or why this issue would persist. Is it possible that some of the LOS changes somehow (soft or hard)brick the camera module at a deeper level?

 

No, this is not the fault of Lineage.  The camera stack is completely closed source blobs from stock except for the kernel driver, and I have not touched the kernel driver at all.

 

3 hours ago, acoppens said:

I'm willing to get some logcats or something if someone can tell me what to do - this might also be useful for the support ticket I've opened. I've been wondering myself whether the camera is just completely dead/unresponsive or perhaps gives some sort of invalid response. But I don't know of any way to check the status of the camera at the hardware level from android.

 

You can start by getting a dmesg from a fresh boot ("adb reboot", "adb root", "adb shell dmesg") and then "adb shell dumpsys media.camera".

 

[acoppens 45]

1 hour ago, tdm said:

No, this is not the fault of Lineage.  The camera stack is completely closed source blobs from stock except for the kernel driver,

This is what I figured, most...probably all...custom roms I've previously used have typically used closed source blobs for the camera (and plenty of other hw).

Tried getting the dmesg but doesn't work on unrooted stock😅.

So'll have a go tonight at flashing test12 and getting the dmesg. Also curious to see if the flashlight is going to work or not.

But first...dinner (pancakes🥳)

 

 

[acoppens 45]

@tdm I ran the commands you asked me to, (on test11, bc test12 would'nt boot but that's for the other thread).

If I understood the output from dumpsys media.camera correctly it's basically only reporting on the front facing camera - finding only 1 camera device.

Then had a look at the dmesg output. not quite sure what's going on here but simply doing a search for 'camera' gives a bunch of related fails and errors....and a naming collision for the flash (could this be why the flashlight doesn't work in LOS, but does work in stock?).

Fun detail - flash doesn't work again in LOS. 

I humbly await wisdom and enlightenment

dmesg.txt dumpsys_media.camera.txt

[tdm 2,322]

32 minutes ago, acoppens said:

@tdm I ran the commands you asked me to, (on test11, bc test12 would'nt boot but that's for the other thread).

If I understood the output from dumpsys media.camera correctly it's basically only reporting on the front facing camera - finding only 1 camera device.

Then had a look at the dmesg output. not quite sure what's going on here but simply doing a search for 'camera' gives a bunch of related fails and errors....and a naming collision for the flash (could this be why the flashlight doesn't work in LOS, but does work in stock?).

Fun detail - flash doesn't work again in LOS. 

I humbly await wisdom and enlightenment

dmesg.txt 256.09 kB · 0 downloads dumpsys_media.camera.txt 29.56 kB · 0 downloads

 

I believe this is your issue:

 

[   21.543915] msm_sensor_fill_eeprom_subdevid_by_name:222 Eeprom userspace probe for sunny_bl24sa64cs_imx363
[   21.545076] msm_camera_request_gpio_table:774 gpio 29:CAM_VANA request fails

...

[   21.700128] imx363 power up failed

 

The imx363 device (that is, the camera) is failing to power up -- it's dead, Jim.

 

[acoppens 45]

 @tdm thanks for the diagnosis....sad, but not entirely unexpected.

I don't know if the support team has been following this thread as well but I received instructions today to send it to London so they can have a further look at what's wrong and how to deal with that.

I guess I'll be missing my 🍤 for a  bit, on the upside you might have gotten to an official build by that time.

I've already ordered a banana-yellow banana phone  to tide me over as my old device was also failing. At least it's also I slider of sorts :P. Will be having a look at/playing around with GerdaOS.

[DieBruine 397]

On 6/2/2020 at 1:05 PM, acoppens said:

@DieBruine what do you mean by hard-reset?
Factory rest from android, factory reset from bootloader, .... ?

'm willing to do as many hard-resets as required (and humanly feasible say ...<10? <20?)  to get it working without having to send my device back or away 😛 and waiting for it to come back

My apologies for the late response 🙄. Still waiting for my replacement screen.
And I see you've figured out that it is a hardware issue.

Keep us updated please. I'm curious to find out what it was and if/how it's been resolved.

[acoppens 45]

So here's an unexpected twist.

It took me a while to get around to actually packing up the phone to send it, but friday I finally made some time.

I figured I'd flash it back to stock before sending it - it was still running the test12 or test13 build.  I'm not sure but I don't think this was a requirement per sé as long as it was running android - I figured it be less work for support.

Anyhow as I was going to box it up, I thought I'd just check the camera one more time ... and lo and behold it's working again. I took it from the firmware in the guide through all the updates so it sort of looks like it was softbricked and some update brought it back to life..  Flashed test build 19 and it's also working again on LOS

Above is my best guess as to why it's working again. I'm obviously really happy with this and don't want to ship it to London otoh I obviously do want some record of this in case it happens again so it'll still be checked out under warranty. I've e-mailed support and will just wait and see what they have to say.

🥳 😕😅