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In 2015, Samsung added the nice camera quick launch feature, and proudly showed it off at Unpacked 2015 (March 1st, 2015), just to ruin it one year later.
While the Galaxy S6 had disappointing removals of long-standing features, one of the additions I much appreciated was the camera quick launch. Double-pressing the home button would launch the camera, one of the most used smartphone features, rather than S Voice. Who used S Voice anyway?
If I am about to miss out a sight, I am going to care about the camera, not S Voice. Sadly, Samsung failed to deliver this feature to earlier models through an update.
Unfortunately, this feature was much deteriorated a year later. Samsung added a useless pop-up that read "Camera has been opened via Quick launch" when the device's sensors detected that the phone was inside a pocket.
The screenshot is from a Note 7, which had this bug too.
The only way to close this pop-up was hitting that tiny little "OK" button, which is undesirable in a moment where you quickly need to take a photo or record a video before it is too late. If you closed that pop-up by tapping the "back" button or by tapping the background, or if you didn't respond to it for five seconds, the camera app would close itself.
The "Camera has been opened via Quick launch" pop-up defeated a major benefit of the Quick launch feature, being able to launch the camera while the phone was still in the pocket. This anti-feature forced the user to pull out the phone first and then launch the camera, or launch the camera by swiping the lock screen camera icon instead of the home button double-pressing shortcut.
The Note 7 also got this pop-up, as well as the 2015 models (S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge Plus, Note 5) through the Android 6 Marshmallow update.
Another bug was introduced too: if you exit the camera using the stand-by button and immediately start it thereafter, it would close itself after two seconds. The only way to bypass this was to exit the camera through the back button or the home button. Also, on Android 6 (unlike Android 5), power saving mode slowed down the launching of the camera. (One should not use power saving mode anyway unless absolutely necessary. Why pay for an expensive phone just to throttle its powerful processors?)
While Samsung came to their senses and removed this nonsense at some point, these bugs caused me to miss moments on several occasions, so this embarrassing failure of Samsung must not be forgotten.
While the Galaxy S6 had disappointing removals of long-standing features, one of the additions I much appreciated was the camera quick launch. Double-pressing the home button would launch the camera, one of the most used smartphone features, rather than S Voice. Who used S Voice anyway?
If I am about to miss out a sight, I am going to care about the camera, not S Voice. Sadly, Samsung failed to deliver this feature to earlier models through an update.
Unfortunately, this feature was much deteriorated a year later. Samsung added a useless pop-up that read "Camera has been opened via Quick launch" when the device's sensors detected that the phone was inside a pocket.
The screenshot is from a Note 7, which had this bug too.
The only way to close this pop-up was hitting that tiny little "OK" button, which is undesirable in a moment where you quickly need to take a photo or record a video before it is too late. If you closed that pop-up by tapping the "back" button or by tapping the background, or if you didn't respond to it for five seconds, the camera app would close itself.
The "Camera has been opened via Quick launch" pop-up defeated a major benefit of the Quick launch feature, being able to launch the camera while the phone was still in the pocket. This anti-feature forced the user to pull out the phone first and then launch the camera, or launch the camera by swiping the lock screen camera icon instead of the home button double-pressing shortcut.
The Note 7 also got this pop-up, as well as the 2015 models (S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge Plus, Note 5) through the Android 6 Marshmallow update.
Another bug was introduced too: if you exit the camera using the stand-by button and immediately start it thereafter, it would close itself after two seconds. The only way to bypass this was to exit the camera through the back button or the home button. Also, on Android 6 (unlike Android 5), power saving mode slowed down the launching of the camera. (One should not use power saving mode anyway unless absolutely necessary. Why pay for an expensive phone just to throttle its powerful processors?)
While Samsung came to their senses and removed this nonsense at some point, these bugs caused me to miss moments on several occasions, so this embarrassing failure of Samsung must not be forgotten.
