It won’t be for lack of options, Android puts a multitude of camera applications at our disposal. Both official and modified, GCam is one of our favorites. But what if you don’t want to search for and install Google Camera APK files? Open Camera is a great alternative. And it’s on Google Play.
Every mobile phone has its own camera app, but not all of them take advantage of the capture possibilities offered by smartphones. Google Camera or GCam, Pixel adapted applicationusually gives very good results, but it is often difficult to find the version and configuration that best suits our Android. And there is a popular application that is also worth installing: Open Camera. If you haven’t tried it, we recommend it.
Open Camera: Android camera improvement since 2013
It seems incredible that an Open Source development can stay at the top of Google Play for almost eleven yearsbut here it is: Open Camera is a demonstration that a neat and carefully developed software always remains up to date. And with some updates that have gradually improved the application.
Open Camera is available on Google Play as well as the usual open source repositories; like F-Droid and SourceForge. It is a very small application in terms of space that takes up almost no storage, quite the opposite of GCam. It takes advantage of the Camera API to introduce manual controls. And it is capable of both taking photos and recording videos.
The application is complete, functional and versatile. It offers very good results, although, of course, These depend on the hardware included in the smartphone.. It offers a host of manual settings for capturing photos, includes autofocus, lets you configure image quality, and even has bracketing controls for optimizing HDR shots.
This offers endless possibilities, but also drawbacks. One of them is the interface: a bit rough and boringbut functional. Another drawback is that Open Camera can vary greatly in its capabilities from one mobile phone to another; although it is not your fault, it will all depend on the compatibility of the mobile phone with the camera API. And this can present difficulties when saving photos.
Open Camera lacks GCam’s tone and image processing, nor its excellent portrait mode. But in exchange, it’s a very lightweight, open source, and super configurable app. Plus, it’s freely available on Google Play, no need to fight with APKs nor with versions adapted to the different Androids on the market.
To download Open Camera, simply go to Google Play. Not only here: as we reviewed, the camera app is also available in open source repositories. It’s worth having as an alternative.
Cover image | Ivan Linares
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