The TRUTH about the camera bug on the Motorola DROID

Earlier we posted an article based on information provided by Tech Crunch saying that the a simple "lens cleaning" will get rid of those pesky autofocus problems. We're not sure if that will work or not...but we have been made aware today of the real reason behind the autofocus problem, and how it all has to do with the date on the phone. It appears that there is an underling bug in the camera app that will cause it not to focus based on the date, and it has a cycle of 24.5 days. We tested this on our Motorola DROID by setting the phone's date to 11/11/2009, and the camera would not focus properly and would show the red bars. We then change it to today 11/17/2009, and the Autofocus worked just fine with green bars showing. Then if we place the date for the end of December, the red bars are back and the autofocus once again has problems. This is truly one of the weirdest bugs we've come across, and hope that the OTA firmware update scheduled for Dec 11th resolves this completely.

Motorola DROID Review | Specifications

source: Howard Forums

*UPDATE 1*
Here are two images we took inside (as it was raining) to try out the camera.
The first image (left) is taken with a date of 11/11/2009, while the next image (right) is taken with a date of 11/17/2009.
Both had the Focus set to Auto (not Macro).
As you can see, the second image is clearer and in-focus, while the first image is not.


*UPDATE 2*
The date related bug has also been confirmed by Engadget.