The OnePlus 3 is one of the most developer friendly devices this year, and a lot of that has to do with the company being generally friendly and open to aftermarket developers and custom ROMs. The OnePlus 3 is one of the easiest devices to unlock, root, and flash a custom ROM to, making it a favorite among developers. But one issue that has plagued 3rd party ROMs is the lack of quality in the camera element.
OnePlus has kept its camera UI code and very specific algorithms close to its chest, and for good reason – the camera code is something that the company has spent a lot of time and effort to develop and fine-tune, so the app and the code is basically intellectual property. So it will be at a disadvantage if it releases the code for custom ROMs to use.
One option is to release the code in a blob – a “binary large object” – which is a container for code that can be incorporated into the custom ROM code where the ROM developers are not privy to the code intricacies. OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei says that they can do this, but there will be tradeoffs in the performance. Camera quality will be good, but the speed of the UI will not be up to par with usual OnePlus 3 usage.
OnePlus is actually asking the community if they want the camera blob with the tradeoffs. If you want to chime in, click this link to the OnePlus forums.
VIA: XDA
