Fixed Google Camera performance issues, Android 10 rules and screen recorder application revealed

A few days ago, we got our hands on the new Google Camera 7.0 APK of Pixel 4. We showed the user interface and were also the first to reveal the features of the Pixel 4 camera that we found in the APK, as well as the mysterious reappearance of the 2019 "Pixel Needle". When reviewing the APK file, we found that the launch of the Google Camera app was slow, suggesting that Google is striving to resolve any performance issues with its application. We have not thought much about it because it looks like standard development work, but Philip Chang (@m4au312) sent us an interesting tip indicating an instruction page hosted on Google Photos. The page describes Google's efforts to speed up the Google Camera app, and the screen recordings on the page have some features of Android 10 that we have not seen, as well as some internal apps that have sparked our interest.

Improve the performance of the Google Camera

Although the Pixel 3 has one of the best cameras in 2018, its camera experience was not perfect. There have been complaints about the application of the camera that did not save images correctly, for example. Google solved these problems with later updates improving memory management, but the damage was already done. In the page, Google mentions that performance improvement is "one of the absolute priorities of the team" in 2019, because of the "way it erodes trust in the product". However, the performance improvement is not as simple as "inverting a switch or repairing a problem". bug or two 'because this requires' considerable effort beyond the camera team, such as Android system and Android performance teams'. For example, the Android team previously created the PinnerService that the Pixel team uses to pin the APK from Google Camera, ODEX, and VDEX files into memory (on my Pixel 2 XL, about 183 MB). With the approval of "Google executive direction", the Google Camera team has established "the focus of focus on" liveliness "" this year, there are "active investigators all the questions. "

The main performance issue tested is the occasional slow launch of the camera app that some users may have encountered. You want to always be able to quickly launch the Camera app in case you need to take an immediate photo or video, but some users may have noticed that it was sometimes time to 'press' on the shutter button will not do anything for the first 10 seconds or so. and the rest of [the] The camera may appear or not appear to be fully charged "while loading the application should take only <2 seconds. This page is for users of Dogfood (Google's internal beta testers) who experience such a "slow launch" when starting the Google Camera app, explaining how to capture a system trace and send a bug report.

go / be faster
This launch seemed slow.
Learn more

Pressing the "Learn More" button will take you to the Google Photos page, as confirmed in the Google Camera 7.0 code. Our informant probably met this page when he himself had a slow launch.

The page was created on May 3, 2019, just before Google I / O 2019, where the company unveiled pixels 3a and 3a XL. Since this page was close to the start date of Google I / O, it is unlikely that the team collected and implemented all of these comments in time for the launch of Pixel 3a. It is therefore likely that the improvements to the camera will appear in the stable update of Google Camera 7.0, which we plan to release with Pixel 4 next month.

Android 10 Rules

In Android Q beta 3, we discovered that Google was working on a way to automate some settings on your phone. We then turned on the feature to reveal that it would be called "Rules" and that you can automatically change the sound mode when you connect to a certain Wi-Fi network or are near a certain location. This feature appears in the Settings application displayed in two of the screen recordings. The screen recording was done on a pixel 3a, it is possible that Google activates this feature on older smartphones Pixel.

Internal app to the Google screen recorder

Android 10 has a very basic free screen recording application that is currently hidden in the stable version, but Google is probably working on a suitable recording application for Android 11 R or Pixel 4. Interestingly, we have spotted a new Recorder application in the screen recordings published on the Google Photos page. The app is called "Reminder" and has an app icon that we have never seen before in any of the existing Google apps. We think that it is used for screenshots because the "Cast" icon displayed when the MediaProjection API is used by an application appears in the status bar, and notifications indicate that the Reminder application is in progress. registration course. In addition, we can see "privacy chips" in the status bar and notifications that indicate when an application is actively using the camera or microphone. This feature appeared in our first leak of Android Q but was removed in public and stable releases.

We do not know what the application looks like and what settings it offers. It is possible that this feature is only used by Google users but it never appears outside of Google. We hope this is not the case because users want to have a screen recorder preinstalled for some time. Android 10 even allows screen recorders to record sound from other applications, but you will need to use a third-party screen recorder to do so.

Volta App?

Finally, we spotted an icon for a "Volta" application that we have never seen before. This may be related to the Project Volta initiative of Android 5.0 Lollipop to improve battery life. This application can be a tool to test the energy consumption of applications or analyze the battery history of the device.

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We are waiting for an announcement about the launch date of Pixel 4 smartphones. We are eager to see the improvements made to the camera by the new phones, especially after the improvements made to Night Sight with the help of a moderated Google Camera app. If we know more about one or the other smartphone, we will let you know.

Google Pixel Forums 4 ||| Google Pixel 4 XL Forums

Thanks to PNF Software for providing us with a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-level reverse engineering tool for Android applications.