Question Unlocking bootloader will disable the camera?

[350zfern]

What country OP? I think this is due to laws in Asian continents.

 

[白い熊]

It's really obnoxious of Samsung to do this, and I am in two minds now about keeping the device and working on a fix for the issue, or simply returning the unit in disgust. This is the kind of practice I expect from Apple, and I always tell Apple users to vote with their wallet when confronted with such anti-consumer practices.

It's ridiculous — though on first look it seems as if it could be remedied via access permissions through a non-complicated Magisk module, as you say. Unless Samsung did some deeper despicable stuff that's not apparent now without playing with it deeper…

 

[ianmacd]

What country OP? I think this is due to laws in Asian continents.

No, this affects the F926B sold in most territories around the world.

 

[ianmacd]

It's ridiculous — though on first look it seems as if it could be remedied via access permissions through a non-complicated Magisk module, as you say. Unless Samsung did some deeper despicable stuff that's not apparent now without playing with it deeper…

I will investigate further this afternoon. I'm rooted now, so returning the device for a refund would be precarious. I knew that when I flashed the device, of course, and made my peace with it.

At the end of the day, I hardly used the camera on my Fold2, and the Fold3 will continue to be my number two device, so it's not a huge loss if we can't get this fixed. At this stage, however, I'm confident we'll manage it one way or another.

 

[BltLkATnk1972]

Would the F926N be any better.

 

[白い熊]

I will investigate further this afternoon. I'm rooted now, so returning the device for a refund would be precarious. I knew that when I flashed the device, of course, and made my peace with it.

At the end of the day, I hardly used the camera on my Fold2, and the Fold3 will continue to be my number two device, so it's not a huge loss if we can't get this fixed. At this stage, however, I'm confident we'll manage it one way or another.

I'm currently also leaning towards keeping it, rooting even without the camera and messing with it to try and get it working…

Still hesitant a little – as for me it's a primary device, but I got the Flip as secondary anyway, so maybe can rely on it's camera for a while.

But still, I'm hoping they didn't do something downright nasty like Sony, like removing firmware on unlock…

Anyhow curious what you discover too.

 

[ianmacd]

Still hesitant a little – as for me it's a primary device, but I got the Flip as secondary anyway, so maybe can rely on it's camera for a while.

Have you checked to see if the Flip has the same issue?

 

[dirtybudha]

THANK YOU for letting us know. I actually NEED the camera but I'm glad to know that something will happen if we root right out of the gate.

Keeping an eye on developments.

 

[白い熊]

Have you checked to see if the Flip has the same issue?

I just checked – it has the standard message, no “blocking the camera” stuff, so I'd bet it doesn't do it. I don't want to unlock and check, as I've setup my work software on it and it's a giant pain, so don't wanna go through that again.

 

[白い熊]

Have you checked to see if the Flip has the same issue?

I just checked – it has the standard message, no “blocking the camera” stuff, so I'd bet it doesn't do it. I don't want to unlock and check, as I've setup my work software on it and it's a giant pain, so don't wanna go through that again.

 

[白い熊]

Have you checked to see if the Flip has the same issue?

I just checked – it has the standard message, no “blocking the camera” stuff, so I'd bet it doesn't do it. I don't want to unlock and check, as I've setup my work software on it and it's a giant pain, so don't wanna go through that again.

 

[ianmacd]

I just checked – it has the standard message, no “blocking the camera” stuff, so I'd bet it doesn't do it. I don't want to unlock and check, as I've setup my work software on it and it's a giant pain, so don't wanna go through that again.View attachment 5392807

Thanks for checking.

If it doesn't mention the camera, then I'm sure it will be unaffected.

But that's interesting, because it's obviously not an issue afflicting all of Samsung's autumn devices. That makes me wonder what's special about the Fold that Samsung felt the need to do this.

 

[Applications]

Thanks for checking.

If it doesn't mention the camera, then I'm sure it will be unaffected.

But that's interesting, because it's obviously not an issue afflicting all of Samsung's autumn devices. That makes me wonder what's special about the Fold that Samsung felt the need to do this.

I wonder what would happen when a new ROM will be installed.
What do you think?

 

[Flame Red]

Samsung has best remember that many of us walked away from Apple long ago because of this kind of stuff. I'd have no problem moving over to some other Andriod vendor if they don't reverse these sorts of antics!

 

[JayRolla]

Well it honestly, looks like what that will be caused by a virus.
Nonetheless, maybe it's Samsung's new way of ensuring you to stay on stock rom so that they can track (and maybe sell) your data, because samsung always does crap different (e.g. odin download mode instead of fastboot, need tar images, csc region code, etc)

OEMs do this more to avoid lots of customer service and warranty issues since users tend to break stuff when they start messing with the device.

 

[sleeper2660]

Yes, my Fold3 (F926B) arrived yesterday and I unlocked its bootloader this afternoon.

I can confirm that all cameras stop working afterwards. This means that facial recognition also fails. Anything that uses any of the cameras will fail.

I tried installing a third-party camera app, but this also failed. I took a logcat of the failure:

07-12 13:50:51.413  1384 31574 W ServiceManager: Permission failure: android.permission.CAMERA_OPEN_CLOSE_LISTENER from uid=10291 pid=8927
07-12 13:50:51.413  1384 31574 D CameraService: CameraDeviceState for CameraManager
07-12 13:50:51.413  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 0 facing CAMERA_FACING_BACK state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client net.sourceforge.opencamera API Level 1
07-12 13:50:51.413  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 1 facing CAMERA_FACING_FRONT state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client android.system API Level 2
07-12 13:50:51.413  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 2 facing CAMERA_FACING_BACK state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client android.system API Level 2
07-12 13:50:51.414  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 20 facing CAMERA_FACING_BACK state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client android.system API Level 2
07-12 13:50:51.414  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 21 facing CAMERA_FACING_BACK state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client android.system API Level 2
07-12 13:50:51.414  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 23 facing CAMERA_FACING_BACK state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client android.system API Level 2
07-12 13:50:51.414  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 3 facing CAMERA_FACING_FRONT state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client android.system API Level 2
07-12 13:50:51.414  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 4 facing CAMERA_FACING_FRONT state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client android.system API Level 2
07-12 13:50:51.414  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 52 facing CAMERA_FACING_BACK state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client android.system API Level 2
07-12 13:50:51.414  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 71 facing CAMERA_FACING_FRONT state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client android.system API Level 2
07-12 13:50:51.414  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 73 facing CAMERA_FACING_FRONT state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client android.system API Level 2
07-12 13:50:51.414  8927  9780 I CameraManagerGlobal: Camera 91 facing CAMERA_FACING_FRONT state now CAMERA_STATE_CLOSED for client android.system API Level 2
07-12 13:50:51.415  1384 31574 D CameraService: getNumberOfCameras E
07-12 13:50:51.416  1384 31574 W ServiceManager: Permission failure: android.permission.SYSTEM_CAMERA from uid=10291 pid=8927
07-12 13:50:51.416  1384 31574 D CameraService: getNumberOfCameras X: ok
07-12 13:50:51.416  1384 31574 D CameraService: getNumberOfCameras E
07-12 13:50:51.416  1384 31574 W ServiceManager: Permission failure: android.permission.SYSTEM_CAMERA from uid=10291 pid=8927
07-12 13:50:51.416  1384 31574 D CameraService: getNumberOfCameras X: ok
07-12 13:50:51.416  1384 31574 D CameraService: getCameraInfo E: 0

At a glance, I'm confident that this can be fixed using Magisk (i.e. root), but I can't rule out the camera having been disabled in other ways, too. The situation may not be recoverable.

After relocking the bootloader, the camera works again.

It's really obnoxious of Samsung to do this, and I am in two minds now about keeping the device and working on a fix for the issue, or simply returning the unit in disgust. This is the kind of practice I expect from Apple, and I always tell Apple users to vote with their wallet when confronted with such anti-consumer practices.

Hey guys do u think there Will be a fix to the camera problem when i unlock bootloader soon

 

[LR7875]

Hey guys do u think there Will be a fix to the camera problem when i unlock bootloader soon

Did they release kernel sources? If yes then we could wait for a custom ROM (but not likely)

 

[honam1021]

Thanks for checking.

If it doesn't mention the camera, then I'm sure it will be unaffected.

But that's interesting, because it's obviously not an issue afflicting all of Samsung's autumn devices. That makes me wonder what's special about the Fold that Samsung felt the need to do this.

I guess someone at Samsung really wants to protect the post processing algorithms for the under screen front camera from reverse engineering, even then disabling all cameras entirely rather than just degrading the quality of the inner front cam seems over the top.

 

[ianmacd]

I guess someone at Samsung really wants to protect the post processing algorithms for the under screen front camera from reverse engineering, even then disabling all cameras entirely rather than just degrading the quality of the inner front cam seems over the top.

I doubt that's the reason, since one can simply unlock the bootloader, do whatever one wishes and then relock it again.

This is an inconvenience only to those who wish to keep the bootloader permanently unlocked.

 

[LR7875]

I doubt that's the reason, since one can simply unlock the bootloader, do whatever one wishes and then relock it again.

This is an inconvenience only to those who wish to keep the bootloader permanently unlocked.

After relocking bootloader camera works fine?