Motorola Droid Autofocus Bug Discovered and Addressed

Amongst all of the uproar over a “silent update” that “fixed” the recently released Motorola Droid’s camera autofocus issues this morning, Android developer Dan Morrill has given an even simpler explanation for the seemingly rectified nature of the issue:

“There’s a rounding-error bug in the camera driver’s autofocus routine (which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly on a 24.5-day cycle. That is, it’ll work for 24.5 days, then have poor performance for 24.5 days, then work again.”

This explains the seemingly inconsistent reviews of the camera functionality across the board before the commercial launch of the device, with the launch resulting in near universal complaints over the camera’s performance.

Verizon is currently working with Motorola on a permanent fix as part of a larger firmware update scheduled for December 11th according to internal documentation.